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"?"

Comments

RIAA

[bs_02_06_02]

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."

I doubt its a coincidence...

[TerminalInsanity]

The RIAA represents big record labels such as Bertelsmann's BMG Entertainment, Vivendi's Universal Music and Time Warner's Warner Music. Time-Warner is the parent company of CNN.com.

I wonder how much influence RIAA has on CNN... With other storys titled " Why suing college students for illegal music downloading is right " and " Why I've stopped sharing music ", im guessing alot.

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 :)

On Reuters and the AP

[Captain McCrank]

These news services have people who are on staff that are paid to create content. My Aunt is actually a writer for the AP and I learned something very interesting a few months back that has totally improved my perspective on articles like this.

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.