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Millions Delete ALL Music Files?
Honig the Apothecary writes "CNN is reporting that millions of people have deleted all the music files from their computers in a story here.
My question is how the hell would they know? Are they substituting "deleted" for the words "disabled sharing with other users"?"
As far as the RIAA is concered, deleting and 'unsharing' are same thing.
Their goal is to stop filesharing, not convince users to pay for what they already downloaded.
Take out deleted and add in burned. With cd writers being under $50, and with blank cds being damn near free, it makes a lot more sence to just burn all your mp3s instead of archiving them on your hard drive.
If you go to NPD Group's website and click on their press release, they had this to say: "Methodology Note: NPD MusicWatch Digital information is collected continuously from the PCs of 40,000 volunteer online panelists, balanced to represent the online population of PC users. NPD's MusicLab survey was fielded in September of 2003 to a representative sample of 5,000 respondents aged 13 and older." How were those volunteer panelists chosen? Perhaps they were provided by their client the RIAA from people who signed their on-line forgiveness document. It's hard to believe any of this information when their clients spend a lot of money to get the answer they want. I could probably produce a study showing that music-swapping is up 400% by monkeys in Nepal.
I love these lines from another CNN Story... "In a culture without copyright, only the rich, or the government-sponsored, could be this culture's full-time creators. Poor artists such as Loretta Lynn would have to flip burgers long into their music careers -- and might even give up on music entirely." So, instead, in a culture WITH copyright, only the rich and government-sponsored (through government-protected monopolies) are this culture's full-time creators. Poor artists flip burgers even though they have multi-platinum selling albums, while the music companies get billions.
It is, because it explicitly says the downloading is illegal. It is NOT. In fact, no one has been sued because of downloading.
Downloading is legal.
RIAA sues people because of uploading (i.e. distibution - because that is what copyright regulates).
I think they are spreading misinformation purposefully (as this article is coming from a law expert) and I guess we should counter this FUD as much as possible.
Real life is overrated.
This note completely explains the situation. These people volunteered to be monitored. They had big MP3 collections and thought "Eh, maybe legal, maybe not, but who cares, nothing will come of it." Then they hear about lawsuits.
Now, since they *volunteered* to be monitored, of course they want to delete all their MP3's. It's kind of like saying "100% of drug dealers who volunteered to have their houses searched with several hours notice have been found to have NO DRUGS!"
Yeah, sure, of course. But that number isn't going to be representitive of all drug dealers.
I personally deleted all of my mp3's as well as all traces of said mp3's in the registry because I didn't want to chance being harassed. However, I also have not purchased a CD since then nor will I ever purchase one in the future.
The music industry stifles musical creativity by picking up the latest britney clones and telling the masses that they are popular. Even the artists that are lucky enough to be chosen don't make anything from the CD sales. It's all about some old man somewhere making 90% profit from each CD sold, just because a group of those guys controls what gets sold to stores, what plays on the radio, and what is seen on MTV.
I can safely say that I've given up on the music industry and the only time I am exposed is when I'm in the car and the radio happens to be on. Good riddance Recording Industry Ass. of America. You can take your pop music and shove it up your ass.
As did I. How does such bad journalism make it to cnn.com..
So without copyright, they never would have made it. Oh, ok. I guess I'll just take your word for it, since you didn't provide any reasoning or proof behind that statement - which the rest of the article is based on, I might add.
Speak before you think
The RIAA is a political organization, looking to ban technology to save their business model.
The recording industry fatcats want their money, and are scared of new technology. No one wants to split from the group and try selling music in any other fashion than the current model. They feel threatened. The industry is behaving exactly like they did during the cassette tape scare, just like the motion picture industry was scared of the VCR and video tape. Remember movie rentals? VHS videos were frequently $100 or more until used movies became available... and movie houses started dropping their retail prices down to the current prices.
Movie rentals threatened the movie industry, until they realized that it actually developed new markets for their material.
The RIAA is not filled with innovative, bright individuals. The RIAA throws money at weak-minded, spineless senators and congresspeople like Conyer, Fritz Hollings, and any politician from California (Berman, Feinstein, etc.). The recording industry sees technology as the end of their business. They are in denial. The emperor has no clothes.
What's really funny is that they also profit from the downloaders. They research what the downloaders' are trading, and call the radio stations to increase air time, which sells more CDs. Hypocrites! They profit from the very process they're trying to stop.
I don't fault them for researching the downloaders' behavior. That's the bright people helping the record biz survive.
The political side of the biz is what I can't stand. This is why most people can't stand politicians or the courts.
Politicians choose not to understand the technology, they choose to listen to those with the biggest pocketbooks. Ostriches... with their heads in sand.
With the RIAA and Fritz Hollings' old method of thinking, the school systems should only be using chalkboards and chalk. The police will be stopping by later to pick up your VCR, computer, and cassette tape recorder.
"No new technology, it ruins our business."
-- No sig for you!
If im counted in the 'millions' statistic, they are wrong... i, and many people i know have stopped publicly sharing, and started sharing to people we download from and know :)
I think CNN's interpretation of "Deleted" is actually just wishful thing. Although I bet a lot of kids have been yelled at by Mom and Dad and probably grounded from "web use" for having kazaa installed.
On a side note (sorta related) I saw the Matrix Revo- last night and before the movie was this ad about software piracy and why it's wrong because lot's of people work hard to make good movies. This was laughed at, booed, and general flaming comments shouted by the audiance at the ad.
Ave Molech Setting
The funny part is, Loretta Lynn didn't get bubkus because of copyright, she got where she was because she worked her tail off performing live and distributing her music to every radio station around, usually by hand. People weren't trying to copy her music...in fact, while she was 'rising to the top' she would have been only too happy to have someone play her music and make it more famous.
--trb
Editors ask writers to create content on subjects that they think will be picked up by other news services. The union rules state that the writer retains the right to withold their name on a story if they feel the story is inaccurate or if they disagree with what they've been asked to write. Editors hate when writers do this because those in the industry know what a authorless article implies. This is why you will sometimes see stories from the AP or Reuters that do reference the author:
Move Over Beauty Queens, Italy Seeks Miss Digital
And others that don't:
Dog Shoots Man
So what does this mean to you, the critical consumer of news? If an article carries the author's name, it means they endorse it's content - they believe in the validity of it. If it does not, it means the writer was either forced to create content that they didn't agree with or believe was accurate or that the writer was up against a deadline and failed to provide content that they were proud of.
The cnn article, interestingly, does not provide an author. Any thoughts on why? The question of how they know content was deleted is awfully vital to getting the point of this article across. It really doesn't seem to stand up to scrutiny.
I may be a little behind the bell curve here, but how does that add up then to "millions" of households. I can understand maybe millions of files deleted...but I checked and rechecked the release and it plainly states "More than a million households deleted all the digital music files they had saved on their PCs in August".
Through the miracle of statistics, it's possible (within a certain margin of error) to extrapolate information on the behavior of a large group of people by analyzing the behavior of a small (but representative) group of people. Thus, if you know how many households are involved in music sharing, you can apply the results of your sample to the population at large and get a very good idea of how that population will behave.
Or is NPD MusicWatch Digital just a puppet of the RIAA? Spreading around a little FUD and dis-information...kinda like the inflated enemy body counts of Vietnam.
It's just statistics, not a conspiracy!
-h-
What I want to know is why did they delete them?
The fact that people feel they need to delete all the music files on their computer is downright scary.
Why scary?
Its not illegal to have music files on your computer! Did they delete "legal" and "illegal" ones alike? If so that means the RIAA has scared people into believing they aren't allowed to have music on their computer.
To me it means the RIAA, MPAA, FTC, courts and elected officials have us afraid to fully use technology in a way that is beneficial to us. We're now afraid we may be dragged into court and fined $millions for having music on our computer. We're being told more and more what we can't do, and not what we can do.
Sorry for the ranting, but its sickening to me to think that so many people may be deleting "legal" music from their computer all because of FUD.
Whatever happened to the pursuit of happiness?
but when the sample is large enough (and 5000 is certainly a large sample), it is also representative of the population whose behavior is being examined. Yes, there is some bias, but if the sample is large enough then that bias is small.
If you ask enough people if they speed you're going to get a pretty good statistcal answer because no-one is very concerned about the police actually coming after you and saying, "Look you confessed to speeding. Here's your ticket." But if you ask the general non-prison population "Have you ever murdered someone?" the response is going to be pretty close to zero. That doesn't mean that that answer is anywhere close to accurate--it means people are reasonably scared of telling the truth even to a survey.
With the RIAA running around threatening lawsuits and looking for multi-thousand dollar settlements I don't think very many people are going to be very honest about their activities in a survey. Even if I had a 1000 MP3s, if someone called me on the phone and said, "Do you have any MP3s or did you delete them all last month" I'd either say I didn't have any or that I deleted them. I certainly wouldn't say, "Oh yeah, I 0wn thousands of MP3s. Take that RIAA! Here's my address and phone number in case you want to sue me."