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Pew Study Says RIAA Tactics Are Working
Furd writes "The Pew Internet & American Life Project has posted a new data study that purports to show that the RIAA lawsuit strategy has successfully reduced P2P filesharing. While the presentation of the data is weak (poor graphics and weak statistics), the report does suggest that there has been a change in the usage of P2P tools."
1. 2003 has seen the biggest emergence of legitimate pay-per-song services to date.
2. The 4 p2p application listed in Pew's report (KaZaa, WinMX, BearShare and Grokster) will naturally lose marketshare due to the availablity of newer, more sophisticated applications.
Yup, new tactics are being employed. For example, I built a nice private, encrypted peer-to-peer network using WASTE. Kazaa, and all the viruses/fake files/incorrectly named files/spyware/trojans are a distant memory. ;)
People who are stupid enough to respond to those surveys are also stupid enough to respond to the RIAA lawsuits.
I'm sure there are fewer users of Kazaa nowadays due to all the press that this campaign has had towards it.
But there are still plenty of strong networks out there. I'm sure some of those Kazaa users have migrated over to them.
Vonal Declosion
From a smart business point of view (which is not necessarily that of the RIAA) it is not if there has been a reduction in freeloading downloads, but rather if there has been an increase in people paying money for music (physical CDs or paid downloads). Since those numbers are not being hyped all over the news, I'm willing to bet that the actual dollar numbers are still declining or at the very least not increasing in anywhere near the proportion of the decreased freeloading downloads.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
And you aren't measuring it.
Seriously... Bit Torrent is so much more enjoyable. I don't even hunt... I just see what comes up... And I feel really good when I find something wacky and obscure.
I know that Kazaa has been flooded with tons of bad song files. The popular ones at least. Record companies have found out that for a hash on a song it does the first 300kb or something and then uses it exponentially.
I don't know of any other fairly popular file sharing program that you can find anything with, also it seems to be that there have been success with online music purchasing, specifically iTunes with 25 million songs downloaded.
Not really big news, everyone knew if the companies offered a dollar per song, and this is years ago, napster-era stuff, that people would buy it, but the record companies wanted to buck the consumer and squeeze that last few pennies out by not changing the industry despite what the people actually wanted.
If what you are reading sounds funny, or sarcastic, lame, or stupid
it is because it is supposed to be. just laugh
It's truly sad to see so many people buckle under the pressure of the RIAA. It just makes the RIAA think they're getting what they want and makes them that much more delusional.
Oh well, just a matter of time before highly encrypted and anonymous P2P hits the masses. Then we can all lean back and smile as they scurry about trying to stop it.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Pew, that study *stinks* of bias! ;)
Gentoo Sucks
Thats because we have all the good songs on our hard drives already, nothing new lately is worth trading.
> I feel sorry for you poor folks thinking lossless music sounds good; I've moved on.
You must have really damn good ears if lossless music "doesnt sound good to you", sir.
We're just all using the newsgroups now.
Well, I guess that depends on your definition of "working"
it may be working to reduce P2P, but is it also working to reduce sales of records, or also working to alienate their customers? it has with me, i guess it remains to be seen whether thats the case with sales figures 6-12 months from now.
You're so leet I want to bear your children.
I don't know about you guys but I do my filesharing the old-fashioned way: with people I know and trust.
And yeah, I must agree, the iTunes music store rocks, and does cut into my filesharing business. If the RIAA labels didn't have their heads firmly up inside their collective asses, they would've bought Napster on day 1 and turned it into what we now call iTunes music store. But that's another story.
So we've got:
1) cool indy music, bands I want to support -> buy CD
2) old stuff, jazz, classic, etc., I want to hear but don't necessarily want to own the actual CD -> iTunes (sparingly, don't want to give the RIAA lots of money for lawsuits and lobbying)
3) everything else (mainstream, blatent RIAA profit center) -> small filesharing group, or friends, or burn&return/burn&eBay
Well, I oggify it for my laptop, and it sounds "okay" but I can hear the difference; mostly in the cymbols and, I dunno, some of the "punchiness" and "energy". Obviously for very high bitrate mp3s its harder, but the files are commensurately larger. Lossless each song is about 50 mb; I can fit about 11 CDs on each DVD-R.
All lossy music sounds like "cassette-quality" to me; I much prefer flac, since technology has allowed me to deal with 50 mb 3-minute songs like its no big deal.
People who are stupid enough to respond to those surveys are also stupid enough to respond to the RIAA lawsuits and pay for music. Furthermore, this year has seen the rise of many legitimate music download services! You can't measure something and then point the finger to whatever cause is convienient!
> I feel sorry for you poor folks thinking lossless music sounds good; I've moved on.
:)
Pew is right...those results STINK
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Doh! I meant lossy, obviously.
Just like how the RIAA blame poor sales on piracy instead of the economy and crappy music, the reason why p2p sharing is going down can also be because of crappy music and the economy (ppl not being able to afford broadband anymore or the storage space or spend their time working menial jobs to survive, etc.)
Just because it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, doesn't ALWAYS mean that it is...it can be a penguin in a duck suit. (lil' linux joke, btw).
More likely the action to cut off kazaalite (by the owners of Kazaa) has had more effect then legal action against consumers by the RIAA.
There is no way in hell I will install that spyware invested crap called Kazaa Media Desktop.
And Gnutella is way too slow over a modem, which is still the predominant form of Internet access. (Well it was when I last tried it)
Which tactic is working? Suing the crap out of d/l'rs or the rise in legitimate sources of online music?
Or it could be the other reason, I've got all the songs I want.
NarratorDan
"If you're not confused by quantum mechanics, you really don't understand it." - Niels Bohr
Of course, this says nothing for uncopyrighted, public-domain, or non-RIAA music, but given that the RIAA has had a history of using sledgehammers to swat flies, I daresay they'd be happier just stomping out P2P altogether than they would be with just getting their own music off of it.
Help protect civil rights from abuse by the TSA - visit TSA News Blog.
http://www.tsanewsblog.com
PDF of the report with much easy to read (but no more informative) graphs and chars.
I personally know that my friends are quickly moving to eMule due to the degradation of KaZaA's usability. They are having no difficulty in migrating to eMule's interface. Perhaps the RIAA should realize that attacking one source doesn't effect other sources, especially with today's computer literate college youth.
Where the Music Matters
The study shows that usage of P2P networks known to be heavily monitored by RIAA is down. This makes perfect sense to both the RIAA and to me, but the WHY is what makes all the difference. To admit why the traffic is really down would show that RIAA is hopelessly sliding into the abyss. It is so much easier for them to lie to themselves and their shareholders and say they are crushing the P2P threat to their business model.
But the p2p hydra has many heads.
RIAA is largely blind to the activity going on in the other networks, most of which are much harder to quickly traverse than gnutella or kazaa. Also, I imagine that no one has written a spidering program for them yet.
The other networks are flourishing right now. Without naming networks, the server count for my favorite p2p network is much higher than normal, as is the user count and the download speed. No one has gotten a warning letter or sued yet for activity on this network, to the best of my knowledge, although some german and spanish ISPs have begun to block the ports it uses.
Extra credit: Can you guess a name for this new network?
Here's a surprise for you - your "lossless" formats are in fact really lossy. To better understand this, consider the difference between 192KHz 24-bit PCM (the best DVD-Audio can do) and 44.1KHz 16-bit PCM (the format used on all CDs). Both are "lossless" per your definition, but all other things being equal, the DVD-A format provides a more complete reproduction than the CD format does. In fact, the CD format loses about 85% of the theoretical information content that the DVD-A format contains. Now compare the DVD-A format to a hypothetical 512KHz 32-bit PCM encoding, same sort of thing applies, ad infinitum.
My point is that while you may not like psycho-acoustical compression like mp3,vorbis,aac,etc - you are still losing information with your so-called "lossless" formats, it is just that the choice about what information to through away is not directly based on human perceptual capabilities but rather simple mechanical inability.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
The only downside is that you can only download what other people have posted. But if you ask nicely someone will usually upload whatever obscure album I'm looking for after a couple of days. In a way, its like a IRC trading with REALLY REALLY bad lag.
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
thats right a report coming from secret sources confirms that the landing of "Spirit" on mars was all staged!!
Just like the Moon Landing was staged! When will the lies end!!
... but not because of the RIAA, but simply because the process of finding the albums I liked was almost impossible. The tedious process of finding the songs, downloading them and then repeating the process if the rip was of poor quality or incomplete was not worth my time anymore.
/. but I thought it's worth mentioning again. When the RIAA will start changing its abusive tactics towards technology in general, then I _might_ consider buying another CD from them. Even then, I have everything ever played by my favourite rock bands, I have a lot of classical music, blues, jazz. And since of late I've been more interested in DJ mixes that are not even available on CD anywhere (try buying DJ Tiesto or DJ Sasha to name just some very well known people), but only on specialised sites or through other friends, I'm even less likely to buy one of the RIAA CDs.
That is not to say that I started buying CDs all of a sudden, far from it. The last CD I bought was more than three years ago (RATM, Battle of LA), and the only reason I did it was because it was my favourite band and I decided to show my support to them. I had the same album in mp3s since the day it came out.
This has been discussed numerous times on
So unless they will actually release interesting, creative music (instead of Britney et al), I couldn't care less about the RIAA's problems. The one way it did affect me was through the levy imposed on mp3 players in Canada, but you can always buy them from private individuals that bring them over straight from HK or Japan. But that's another can of worms, and it's off topic under this article.
that's great, they've scared people into not copying shitty music. but the question is "Are they SELLING more of their shitty music?" that is the only relevant question. i mean, logically, if you deter people for doing something (even if the chance of being punished is low) it WILL decrease. but punishing customers tends to piss them off and discourage purchases. so what NEW information is there in this post, oh wait, this is slashdot
That's all it is but with the news of lawsuits and things of that nature common sense dictates that people haven't stopped...they have all just moved to the 3rd tier of underground.
Mainstream Tier (Leaves out user friendly gui's, freenet, gnutella, and others I won't list as I'm not helping the enema...errr...I mean enemy)
1st Tier - Store Bought Cd's
2nd Tier - Napster
3rd Tier - Kazaa
4th Tier - Too many to list plus I'm not helping those pussies out.
Pretty simple.
RIAA (TRIES) to raise the bar
The public goes further underground and averts being caught.
The majority of people are a step a head and the RIAA is a step behind.
The RIAA thinks they are being pro-active when in fact they are re-active.
You can't beat what you do not understand and you can't stop the future.
Period.
RIAA = Pathetic existense and they only get through to the people who use those AOL cd's they get in magazines.
You aren't free to do anything, until you've lost everything.
I hate to admit it, but I do think that the RIAA will ultimately win this battle. Much as consumers accepted a higher price with the arrival of casette tapes, then CDs, some form of DRM will probably win out.
I've heard the argument that consumers will not accept paying for an intangible (that is, no physical object). But the iTunes model allows the consumer, in a limited way, control over the physical. From their purchase, they burn their physical dividend. One could argue that the consumer gains *more* through DRM/license-ware, as some plans allow the consumer to burn multiple CDs.
Most of the people I know (by that, I mean average, largely non-technical) still buy the occasional CD. They hate the RIAA in the abstract for Napster, but it does not stop them from buying. More and more have given up on P2P. Whether it's fear of a lawsuit or general hastle of finding Top-40, it just isn't worth their time anymore.
The RIAA doesn't need to destroy P2P, that would be impossible. All it needs to do is break it sufficiently to make their "alternative" more attractive. I personally believe thing will reach an equilibrium, eventually. P2P will always be around, in some form, for the dedicated. The RIAA will be sure to quash anything before it reaches critical mass. While on the other hand, DRM-ware will evolve into something more accomodating.
It seems as though Pew (both in name, and in quality of research) forgot to consider the huge number of 'legit' online music resources currently available. BTW - I think PetSmart is going to open up their own branded online music store. Talk about woofers and tweeters!
Sig? - yeah, whatever.
I still download music without paying for it. I probably download more now than ever. The funny thing is I still buy the music that I think is good enough to hear more than once or twice.
Do I use Kazaa? hell no! I have to download 10 versions of a song just to get the "real" version of it... the one without some weird sound effects or just being the first 10 seconds repeated for the 4 minutes that the song should really be.
Welcome to bittorrent land. I'll not post the URL from the server I use regularly for obvious reasons, but rest assured I can get more there than I could with Kazaa anyday. Now I download whole albums at a time instead of just 1 or 2 songs in order to determine if a record is worth buying.
The great thing about bittorrent is that if people find that a song or album is fake they just stop sharing it. All of a sudden that album that should have 2000 people sharing it because it's so good only has 2 people sharing it (and they'll stop as soon as they unzip it and listen). That tells me to pass and find the real version.
I hope the RIAA realizes that instead of ending the problem they just made it burrow deeper. This time there is no centralized network that they can shut down in order to maximize profits from the unsuspecting consumer. If they kill one, 5 more will show up in it's place. I hope they are happy with what they have caused to be created.
Right now, the networks are small. Remember how small Napster or Kazaa began as? What happened a few months to a year later? Exactly... Expect 2004 or 2005 to be the year of bittorrent (or another decentralized network)
"Well kids, you tried your best, and you failed. The lesson is, never try." -Homer Simpson
Who would say yes if asked on the phone if they are illegally downloading music from the internet?
The study could just as well mean that people are more aware that copying music is illegal and thus are more reluctant to admit to it.
Could it be that everyone already has all the music they want? I know that's why I quit downloading after amassing an over 2,000 song collection. I simply ran out of stuff to download. Hmmm.
It would be interesting if they could actually identify the people who stopped using the file-sharing programs they looked at. It might correspond to the more tech-savvy geeks who've moved on to better things.
I want to buy the latest A Perfect Circle album, but I can't buy it new and act in a way I find morally acceptable. I refuse to give any financial support to the RIAA, so unless I find it used I won't be getting it.
Unless I had what my girlfriend calls "a boys look" at the article, it doesn't actualy say anything about these people switching from downloading to buying, does it?
i found this note on a previous survey for p2p downloading:
In the March-May 2003 survey, 21% of Internet users responded "yes" to the question, "Do you allow others to download files from your computer, such as music or video files?"
I noticed the consipcous lack of the word 'copyrighted' there.
Just wondering if they had changed that.
How else would something so evil be explained?
"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face, it's just a goddamned piece of paper!" - George W. Bush Nov. 2005
Did the sale of records increase?
That's why it's called the "Pew" study.
I started downloading mp3s from usenet and irc in 1997; I never used napster.
You justify you are right before you say anything because you have been on the internet since 1997 and you use IRC and usenet which are synonyms for leetness.
I listen to lossless formats now (flac and shorten). I have 500 GB of hard drives and back up my music to DVD-R ($1 each for 4x media at Central Computer in Sunnyvale).
More Leetness. You are better than us because you listen to loseless formats and use DVD-R and have a lot of space(honestly... 500GB is nothing)
Fortunately most of the bands I like are jam bands and encourage swapping. I feel sorry for you poor folks thinking lossless music sounds good; I've moved on.
Ahhhhh... The point to your post. You feel SORRY for us. Because we just aren't as leet as you and what a shame that is. Get off your pedestal and wake up. Did you forget where you are? This is SLASHDOT. All you have done with this post is to set yourself up for a FLAME war. Yes... we nerds are nothing but biggest dick competitions with our hardware and mp3 collections. 500 GBs... I am counting with TB now. DVD-R... I back up my stuff with hard-drives. DVDs are just too small. 1997... your a freakin newb... BBS? DARPANet?
The lesson here... don't thing you are better than anyone here... because you are not... Their is a nerd just waiting to prove that around every corner.
...if they took shut down off Kazaa Lite into account.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I had never used _any_ P2P-type app before I started using BT sometime last year. RIAA has had little to no effect on that, so technically my filesharing useage has increased. I knew Napster-style "sharing" was just a form of stealing - I didn't need to see 12yr olds sued to know that.
-bZj
.sig
So the RIAA's scare tactics work. Huzzah. Welcome to the United States of the Best Attorneys Win. On a related note, I'm sure a policy or machine-gunning random jaywalkers would result in a sharp increase in the number of people using crosswalks. The possibilites are endless.
Shhhhhhhhh!
What I'm dreading is someone putting together a natty tool that will make newsgroup request/access/upload/download seamless - then the RIAA will go jump all over the news servers.
Without a doubt.
I'd wager that the plaintext-and-public P2P networks are declining in direct proportion to an increase in the popularity of encrypted-and-(somewhat-)private networks. Stopping people who want to swap files will be every bit as difficult as stopping spammers. The infrastructure is just too well suited to the application.
The percentage of online Americans not admitting to downloading music files on the Internet has increased and the numbers who are downloading files on any given day have not changed since the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) began filing suits in September against those suspected of copyright infringement. Furthermore, a fifth of those who admit they continue to download or share files online say they are going underground more often because of the suits.
A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from November 18-December 14 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that the percentage of music file downloaders hiding their activities had increased to 15% from 0% when the Project last reported on downloading from a survey conducted during March 12-19 and April 29-May 20. On an average day during the spring survey, 4% of Internet users said they downloaded files. In the November-December survey just 3% were underground on any given day during the survey period.
[snip]
Furthermore, in the Pew Internet Project survey, the percentage of Internet users who admit they share files such as music, video, picture files or computer games with others online dropped from 28% in a June 2003 survey to 20% in the November-December survey. Compared to music downloading, the drop in those who say they share music (does this sentence actually make sense to anyone???) or other types of media files was less pronounced. This may reflect the large amount of media attention focused on the recording industry's attempts specifically to force music downloading and sharing underground, while efforts to bury those who circulate copyrighted images or programs have been less visible. Additionally, there may be a fraction of Internet users who are simply less likely to admit to either downloading music or sharing files due to the negative media portrayal of the activity. (Hey, they told the truth!)
While multiple factors may have contributed to the move underground, every nook of the music downloading world has continued business as usual, including the parts of the population that were the most prolific users of online file-sharing networks. Steep drops in admitting to downloading were recorded among students, broadband users, young adults (those ages 18-29) and Internet veterans. The groups that recorded the greatest move to new P2P networks were women (58% moved to new networks), those with some college education (61% moved) and parents with children living at home (58% moved). The survey was conducted among those 18 and older.
so P2P is down... are sales therefore up? that was the point right?
BBS since 1986. MP3 since 1997, duh.
DARPANet? ... nah, i'm a newb -- internet only since 1993.
TB ... I back up my stuff with hard-drives
nothing wrong with that, what made you think I was trying to say I'm better?
Just saying I don't like lossy music...
I don't doubt that the scare tactics have worked, and casual P2P users have been scared off. I have friends who are just now getting DSL lines and are scared to death to load up Kazaa or Limewire out of fear that the sheriffs will immediately knock down their doors. But I'll also bet there's a large number of people who've been there since the Napster days, who have hundreds of gigs of mp3 files they'll never get around to listening to. P2P activity might also be levelling off because so many users have all the music they'll ever need... And spending all day and night trading files no longer has the illicit thrill it used to.
I will, on occasion use a P2P service, though I keep it short and sweet. Never did use P2P big however, so the change is minor in that the frequency went down a bit.
Why use P2P? Got addicted to the variety of music present on Napster. You know, find a user with similar tastes, then grap a couple tracks you don't know, but might like. That's fun stuff that is just too damn expensive to do otherwise.
The new pay services make it pretty easy to get a lot of music, but fall way short in the finding new music area... Rock from the Aussies, techno / house / trance from Europe and Japan is very appealing to me. Didn't know that until Napster. In a way, I kind of wish I didn't given all the majors mistakes today.
I am not sure they are going to like the bigger changes however. When P2P started, I would exchange song titles with friends. Each person would just grab a copy because that was easiest. Now we are all back to the old way of doing things; namely, trading tracks directly.
How?
Ssh, scp directly from machine to machine. The music I do buy, and I do buy music just as I always have, gets ripped. Stuff I think friends might find interesting, or that ends up part of a discussion gets traded instead of just named. The stuff that comes from P2P gets hashed around and played a bit. If it's good, I buy it, then trade the quality encodes from that with whomever was interested during the critique stage. So in the end, most of the costs are there with time and distance being less of a factor. Nice improvement over dubbing parties, but it could be way better.
A while back, we were helping a small group master a CD. Sometimes it is hard to articulate production values when some people are missing the tracks in question, for example. We could lend physical media, but why? We have nicely networked computers that save a lot of time, it is foolish not to use them. Afterall, the production is happening over the Internet, why not foster the discussion as well? This sort of sharing is a totally necessary thing and can get expensive if done the way they think we should do it. The really creative folks need stuff to create from. This means a lot more music to listen to, discuss and build style influences from. If everybody hears the same top 100 crap, then we are going to get more top 100 crap --exactly what we don't need to sustain a healthy music market. P2P really helps with that, maybe it shouldn't, but the truth is it does.
Personally, I think P2P is great stuff for learning about music. It also works well for lots of other things like software, though torrents are better for new or popular software. The Apple model is a good one, though its a shame Apple and the artists do not get a bit more of the cut.
It has been mentioned many times here, but I will say it again. The majors are fools plain and simple. If they had taken the Napster deal, they would be rolling in dough right now with monthly subscriptions and marketing data up the wazoo that we paid to give them! But, nooo they want control. Today they pay the price. Lots of lawyers, annoyed customers, and the confines of age all doom them to lackluster sales and growing vulnerabltiy to potential newcomers who get it.
People all over the place are making interesting music with inexpensive equipment. Mp3.com was a first attempt to aggragate them and present them to potential listeners. It worked, but not well. Others will follow, just as the P2P clients evolve, so will they. As they get it right, the majors will be sooo sorry.
I have traded tracks all my life starting with cassette and a bit of reel to reel. For me, nothing has changed really. Napster was a brief flurry that likely cost them a few sales, but the real cost was my newly opened eyes to the real diversity in music I was missing out on. I buy music in about the same quantities I always have; namely, small quantities because good albums are few and far between, I would buy a lot more If I could get it at
Blogging because I can...
They have the effect of imposing natural selection on our P2P networks. Those that have vulnerable infrastructure will fall, and ones that do not will prosper. Sure, they are accomplishing their goal in the shortest of short terms, but they're creating the motivation and inspiration for unstoppable, anonymous pirate networks. It may look like the music industry is getting healthier, but they're just encouraging the creation of a bigger, badder bug.
But there is another kind of evil that we must fear most... and that is the indifference of good men.
Why use Kazaa to steal a song when you can use Bit Torrent to steal every album a band has ever released in one file?
For argument's sake, assuming some sort of causative correlation here, SO WHAT?
Gee, you mean that suing boatloads of people for doing something, with the help of heavily slanted copyright laws essentially designed to scare people into compliance has... done exactly that?! How AMAZING.
No, wait... next you're going to tell me that after the 9-11 attacks fewer people flew on airplanes, or that after a breakout of mad cow disease fewer people ate beef.
Rational risk avoidance is simply rational risk avoidance. Just because we see some evidence that people may have avoided a perceived risk doesn't mean it was "right" in any way to intentionally create those risks.
Nevertheless, RIAA is trying to imply that the reduction in filesharing somehow morally vindicates its position.
Easy to test, of course: RIAA should publicly announce that now that people have "learned" their lesson, they will no longer sue anyone. Any guesses what would happen?
W = (-president)^1/2
Im on a dedicated university connection. I can not afford for the RIAA to sniff my way. I have a few connections to a few FTPs that get current music AND when I am at lunch I have access to someone's WAP and I download when I am there. My download habbits have gone from a new album a week and then some to about a new album a month in 2003.
Ive also started using Winamp5's Internet Radio more often then not...
The ultimate network admin tool needs HELP!
You just opened up a can of worms. :)
Regardless, most of the *good* news connections are pay-for anyways, which leaves most of the college kiddies with virus-laden P2P tools.
By now any serious downloader would have downloaded his/her favorite songs and collected a few GBs. And maybe the new music is just not worth downloading. It would have been interesting to see if the decrease in file-sharing resulted in any increase in CD sales but the CD sales data is missing from the study.
It may be working but these tactics must be costing RIIA some money and the increase in revenue from CD sales may be hard to come.
Poor graphics? A study doesn't have to be prettied up to be a good study.
I think that mainstream P2P may have gone down. However underground P2P is going waaaay up. All the RIAA has done is to force this underground. The Pew study likely doens't look at the underground methods. I think most of us know what software I mean.
But let them think they've won. Hopefully it will blind them to reality and hasten their well deserved end.
--Won't that be grand? Computers and the programs will start thinking and the people will stop. - Dr. Walter Gibbs
In my highschool all my my friends are somewhat scared they're going to be on the hitlist, so they've completely stopped their sharing of pop and hip-hop music. Some teachers at my schools have actually been trying hard to persuade students not to "download music from the internet anymore", which is complete bullshit. Recently I've noticed, that RIAA's original message "Do not share popular music on p2p networks", is now somehow been popularized as "Do not download music from the internet". I have no idea how this happened, but my guess is those idiots out there haven't realized the difference between the internet and p2p networks, and "popular music" with "music". The morons and end users out there are spreading the wrong message, and it's pissing me off.
http://www.palmzone.net
Sorry, but I doubt the music industry launching a double front attack with law suits and rather expensive and less usable alternatives is that much of a coincidence.
For that matter, the two pronged assault was probably orchestrated. To launch lawsuits without a replacement technology in place would be a losing strategy. Launching legitimate music channels while building a case against the anti-capitalist P2Pers would have weakened the case for built in copyright protection.
You probably should ammend your post to say that both the lawsuit and pay per song services were part of the strategy, and that the strategy is working quite well at keeping the power in the hands of the few.
Watching the free music crowd getting played for suckers was an extremely painful thing to watch...especially since their was a better option: If there was respect for the written laws, we could have had our MP3s and copied them to our MP3 player too. Hey, we may have even been in a better position to change the laws for the better.
Sure, studies have confirmed that while the riaa's tactics may have reduced p2p file sharing. Bullying the public does make some people give in after all. However, studies have also confirmed that file sharing does not hurt cd sales. The Riaa is simply making itself hated in the internet community. It's continued attempts at making "pirate" proof cd's cannot succeed because the riaa is made of a limited number of people with time they are paid for, while there are a rediculous amount of people in the internet community with loads of free time that they spend trying to defeat the riaa's cd security. This is why all software security is destined to be broken eventually.
the error correction performed by a standard player makes it too, lossy.
i honestly prefer vinyl- literally lossy.
get off the high horse.
But the p2p hydra has many heads.
I've seen the videos you're talking about, but those are really more prehensile phalluses with mouths.
Be careful what you search for, you just might find it.
Well shit I prefer a live concert in a room with good acoustics.
But between MP3 and Flac, I have a clear favorite.
The two are comprable.
Flac ripped with abcde.
I use bittorrent for all my software, audio books and ebooks and movies.
For my music, I use Rhapsody and a program called Replay-Radio, which automatically records music that you are playing online (whether it's a playlist at a pay-for-service site, a free radio station or a standard radio station - or any other audio that is coming across your sound card, in fact). So for my $8/mo, I have access to half a million streaming songs, only I capture the audio with this program and have the songs forever.
While I could save $8 per month with p2p sources of my music, p2p can't beat the variety, ease and speed of what I'm already doing.
Though it doesn't completely discredit the research, there are flaws (one large, one not so large) that are immediately evident.
1. It was a telephone survey, which by law excludes the sampling of minors. All anecdotal research I have seen is that minors make up a significant population of online file traders. It is my opinion that this segment of the population could have a serious impact on the results.
2. The fact that the research is conducted during a time when the RIAA is efectively criminalizing file sharing will motivate people to answer dishonestly for fear of being "tagged" a copyright violator. When a survey relies on an honest answer to be an admission of criminal activity, people will not be as forthright with their answers.
I don't think that this would change the overall answer, that copyrighted file trading is down, but I think it would sigificantly impact the degree of its decrease. I think the Pew Internet research is most likely overstating the impact of the lawsuits.
Which actually raises another issue - how much of the decline can be attributed to other factors, such as:
1. Poor music released in 4th qtr 2003
2. Increased self-regulation of file sharing in the University/College segment
3. Filesharing becoming "old news" - basically the idea that everyone gets a TON of music when they first discover file sharing, then taper off as the previous 3 months of new music is no where near the volume of multiple decades of music people were grabbing at the outset.
4. The proliferation of licensed online music distribution, such as iTunes, Napster 2.0, etc
All in all I would conclude that the research has limited usefulness in measuring the effects of RIAA subpoena activity.
In this context, "Lossy" and "lossless" refer to the compression algorhythms, NOT as you seem to impute, the original encoding of the material. A mp3 (lossy compression) ripped from a 44.1 pcm stream will sound worse than a flac, shn, or ape (lossless compression) taken from the same stream.
That quibble aside, yes I agree with you. Taken to its logical conclusion, the best way to listen to great music is hearing great musicians play it live. So get out there and support them, dammit!
That instances of jaywalking are lower in a police state.
I don't doubt the statistics, but are threats of disproportionate punishment really the way a civilised society should behave?
To be fair there probably is some causation, and it's interlinked in a web.
One might expect this to be able to be abstracted to a predator prey model, where lawsuits might be members of the predator species, and the gross files shared as the population of the prey.
Increases in the pedator population might cause the prey to crash (and evolve) then rebound fantastically. Ultimately, the prey will evolve much more swiftly than the predators who are constrained by another pressure (the legal system) which is expensive and difficult for them to influence.
The real danger for the predators is the escalation of the arms race which might get out of hand, causing a new and improved prey to explode out of their reach depleating the resources and the balance they all depend on, forcing everyone to endure drastic change.
Asserting there is no causation is akin to saying people neither understand nor percieve intimidation. Which is patently false. Lawsuits are having some effect. Mostly likely a net downward pressure. While the study doesn't to the best job of quantifying that effect, their infered causal relationship is hardly without merit.
It was anchored by OJ Simpson!!
Assuming that CD is properly recorded (which it rarely is, properly recorded CDs require properly constructed audio systems) and properly reproduced (even less chance, due to crappy stereos with cheap acoustics) there is NO information loss within audible frequency range. Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem doesn't lie. Whatever gets in is reproduced exactly at the output. You have 96dB dynamic range (more than enough) and 2Hz to 20KHz frequency range (which is more that even babies can hear).
Now lemme explain why anything more than 20bit/96KHz is bull crap. First, let's tackle 96KHz. Raising the sampling frequency to 96KHz actually makes sense, because it becomes a lot easier to make a good sounding CD player. You don't need oversampling anymore and you don't need high-order digital filter to filter out the harmonic images in inaudible band. The same thing applies to recording. You can record with less than perfect low-pass filter, and even though there will be horrible aliasing you won't be able to hear it anyway as it will be well above 20KHz. Now let's consider 24bit part. If you calculate the potential dynamic range of a linear DAC with full 24 bit input you will see that it at this point it is PHYSICALLY impossible to construct an analog amplifier that will fully exploit more than 20 bits of its dynamic range. Why? Because the dynamic range will be limited by the noise floor, which in turn will be limited by thermal noise in resistors and semiconductors. Calculations show that anything above 20 bit is simply not worth the effort - you won't be able to hear a single bit of difference anyway, the first 4 bit will be well below the noise floor.
The part where you say you feel sorry for us. The part where your comment has nothing to do with the article whatsoever. The part where you give your credentials (as if anyone asked or cares).
500GB. Of *lossless* music? hahaha. Get over yourself.
Personally, I switched from SHN (/flac/wav/other-lossless-format) to AAC 160 awhile ago. Well, since getting the ipod. :) You can't tell the difference for typical listening environments.
And your laptop's DAC is so bad that you can't tell the difference anyway. (USB audio to a HQ DAC is the way to go if you want really high quality.)
what is the point of good audio quality when you have such shitty taste in music?
-q 7.0 oggs are quite nice indeed. I play my standard -q 7.0 oggs made from my cds at 24bit output through a resampler that ups the rate to 96khz. Put that through the 24/96 asio of the audigy 2 plat ex which goes into a Sony home theater syste... wonderful sound that manages to sound better than the raw cd.
Shun the major labels (if you're not already doing that), shifing support to the smaller labels, which are thriving due to the internet. iTunes, etc would be great if they worked directly with artists or small labels. There'd be more food on the table of the talented artist (and not just the promoted), more good food to the minds of the listening public and less SUVs and waste.
Stand up against those who wish to dictate what you can see or hear. Push for the distributed, open, fair and optimal archive which is possible with the tech that we push. The vision can only be realized with (continued) effort.
Andy
RIAA can tout whatever polls they want. File sharers will keep on sharing regardless.
384 non-variable encode rate using latest lame.
i defy anyone to pick it out over it's twin non-compressed track, using ears only.
my songs are 10 megabytes.
what takes you 500 gigs, will fit on a 100 gigs for me.
that efficiency cannot be beat. i spend less money, the musics sounds every bit as good.
for far less then half the cost of your setup, i have my 100 gigs of 384bitrate mp3s and AN ENTIRE MIRROR(on a separate system), that's automated.
i spend zero time archiving. i don't need a dvdr, or a mountain of dvds to back up my stuff.
when i need more space, order two more 160gig drives from newegg for $100 each, one for my system, one for it's mirror.
I am a linux advocate, but to keep things realistic, I have to tell you that I doubt many people are using Opera. Most linux users use mozilla and a few netscape. i think netscape reports itself as mozilla too. And web pages are getting better at being mozilla compatible so that most/many people don't have to change their browser id to reporting msie.
So this 1% google statistic is a total mystery to me. I suppose 99 in a 100 people are idiots when it comes to computers. Remember, there are a whole lot of idiots out there, including our very own "president" of the United States of America; it's shocking and it's easy to "mis-underestimate".
I think if Linux is to take off, the hardcore linux advocatates must adopt an aggressive strategy, such has hunting down and disabling windows users, or their computers. After enough people are terrorized, many would be cowed into using giving linux a try, and the movement would grow from there. Furthermore, Microsoft needs to crack down on windows pirates (of which there are a whole lot out there). Hardcore legal action should also be pursued against SCO, and MS partners and insiders.
On a side note, I also think the GNAA and RIAA have way too much power over the common people, and they should be hunted down too.
...blackmail works - what's new?
Mike
Cloudburst Bar
Maybe I'm just out of touch, but it doesn't feel like we've had a slew of new 'hit' albums released this year. Even music trading is based on influx of new content.
"Derp de derp."
The study shows that usage of P2P networks known to be heavily monitored by RIAA is down. This makes perfect sense to both the RIAA and to me, but the WHY is what makes all the difference. To admit why the traffic is really down would show that RIAA is hopelessly sliding into the abyss. It is so much easier for them to lie to their shareholders and say they are crushing the P2P threat to their business model.
But the P2P coin has many sides.
RIAA is largely blind to the activity going on in the other networks, most of which are much harder to quickly traverse than GNUtella or KaZaa. Also, I imagine that no one has written a spidering program for them yet.
The other networks are flourishing right now. Without naming networks, the server count for my favorite P2P network is much higher than normal, as is the user count and the download speed. No one has gotten a warning letter or sued yet for activity on this network.
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
They cannot claim to have been effective merely by a change in peer-to-peer traffic volumes. To demonstrate true effectiveness they have to demonstrate a statistically significant surge in CD sales.
So what you're saying is you throw away less information and it sounds better. In the long run, what's the difference between 100 gb and 500 gb? I prefer to spend a bit extra money because I know I have more data. It's like having a car with a lot of horsepower when the speedlimit is 55 mph.
I can hear the difference in cymbols. That's where most of the data is thrown away -- the bright, punchy cymbols.
Ok, this one's kind of out there, but I think I've came up with the real reason file sharing is going down. Stick with me here. Now, you know as well as I do "piracy" (thought pirates had to have sabers and cool hats) doesn't really hurt CD sells by and large. If anything, it helps good artists/bands that aren't well known and pushes them. Take Darude and ATB for example. Before internet file sharing really picked up, they were known by some, but not many people. Now, practiaclly everyone has either heard of them or at least of the Sandstorm and Summer songs. And their success can be attributed at least in some part to the popularity they gained thanks to file sharing. I know I'm not alone in being one of the people that first downloaded their music, decided I really liked it, then went and bought the CDs. The point is, groups/artists like these have benifited heavily from piracy.
Now we also know that for the few bands/artists that have seen CD sales down due to piracy it is only for the fact people will acquire the one or two songs they want off a CD that are not available on a single, and opt to not pay $20 for an additional 15 tracks of shit. Ok, maybe some bands like Metallica and Bizkut (weither you like them or not, make no mistake, they recycle heavily and have for a long time. Besides, it makes this theory no less viable.) lose some sells here, but only because they can no longer get by with 1 or 2 good songs and now need to generate a decent CD in order to get sells.
Ok, now the good part, the point of it all. Now, I'm not sure exactly how long p2p file sharing has been around, at least 5 years. And I know about 7 or 8 years ago, I was using a fairly mature Hotline client to download music with their client/server architecture. So we've probably had ~10 years of more or less easy music file sharing. What if the decrese in file sharing is due to the same reason we're seeing a decrese in CD sales? What if file sharring traffic is dropping simply because we're just running out of stuff we want? I seen exactly 2 CDs I've thought were worth purchasing in the last year, and by and large, the music industry is just producing unbelievable amounts of pure crap lately. It didn't always used to be like this. 2 or 3 years ago, I probably bought ~15 CDs a year, because while it wasn't the highest quality stuff, it was still decent, and there was still some older stuff I wanted. But now I have everything up until current that I want, and nothing much is really appealing to me currently. And I'm not alone. There's not a huge demand anymore for Boy Band #13287-Q, Britany Clone #31775-B, and Mad Street Cred Rapper #21992-H. Not a lot of origional, interesting material is being made right now.
So, back to the point. What if most of the people that do download music online are just simply running out of stuff to get and already have everything they want, and that is the real reason file sharing is down? Especially with broadband. I know whenever I get on a decent pipe, I spend about an hour downloading EVERYTHING I've been meaning to get lately, and then I can't think of anything else I'd want. I'm sure the RIAA tactics have scared away some, but I also know I probably didn't even download 20 songs all last year. A couple years back, I'd pull that many, if not more, down a day sometimes.
Just a thought.
Request: ECM unit, 1000 km fullerene cable, 1 tactical nuclear weapon. Reason: Birthday party for foreign dignitary.
FUD helped the stupid americans to start the war (and telling the lie about sadam and 9.11.).
If you have enough money and media power you can manage to handle anything in the US.
Let's see what's next...
regards from germany
You are comparing apples and oranges. Obviously if you decrease the sampling resolution you lose some details of the original sound.
The lossless encoding schemes are referring to compressing the given stream. Compared to the analog original, yes there is some loss. But from the first digital sampling there is no information loss. You can always exactly reproduce the original digital stream therefore is is considered lossless.
44.1KHz theoretically covers the entire audible range of humans. So the only thing lost in the digitization is the dynamic range. And it is entirely possible that humans cannot resolve 16 bits worth of that either.
The real reason that P2P sharing is down is simply because we have most of the music we want now. We're done getting those hits from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. Now we just have to get the small amount of good stuff to keep up. Once people's collections are complete the P2P will slow to a trickle. :)
+1 interesting!
And +1 correct about bagging being a monkey job. Jeez, bagging groceries sucks.
Yeah, I'm having a slow day.
Duct tape, XML, democracy: Not doing the job? Use more.
You're right! Quickly, my Soldiers of the Internet! Download . . . download like there's no tomorrow!
Should be applaud RIAA for stopping violations of the law when everyone said they couldn't? Or should we contribute to projects that develop encrypted P2P untracable through plausible deniability? I think this is separate from the question weather CDs are too expensive or singers are too poor.
On one hand, giving some data to other people is a form of free speech and once people can accept its illegal, they can also accept a pretty scary society. On the other hand, most of us spend the day writting programs that other people find useful and need food, shelter and entertainment in exhange. Hopefully some alternative way to provide those is found first, before the intellectual property is abolished. Go figure.
no matter how lossless a recording of [insert name of boy band here] it still sounds fucking awful to me ;)
DON'T BRAG ABOUT YOUR SERVICE THAT ISN'T BEING WATCHED BY THE RIAA AND CO. UNLESS YOU WANT THEM TO WATCH IT. DO YOU THINK THEY DON'T READ THESE GEEK SITES???
H HH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
SECRETS ARE SECRETS ONLY IF NO ONE TELLS THEM.
Slashdot poster: hahah my XYZ client is RIAA free - nanny nanny naa naa"
RIAA snoop: "Google this XYZ thing and lets get rolling on this one too"
SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
BE VERY BERY QUIET.........
Is the juice worth the sqeeze?
Maybe they mean that since the RIAA started prosecuting file-sharers, there is less observable file-sharing.
W.A.S.T.E. , anyone?
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
remember dvd audio is usually 48khz. that is a really big reason why it is better.
But now, when wandering past a CD store with cash in my pocket, I feel vaguely dirty going inside and in any way contributing to the RIAAs coffers. I do feel guilty that the artists get nothing too. The funny thing is, I dont even use the P2P netowrks to download songs. I always just ripped my own CDs. So yeah the RIAA has changed my behaviour - I now spent my money on entertainment other than music.
I don't use P2P anymore. Now it has been about 9 months since I last bought a record. Guess they're happy :)
If they had shown that CD sales had gone up, that would be useful to them. But if P2P usage goes down and CD sales are still slumping, that can mean several things:
Their arguments about P2P causing drops in CD sales holds less water.
Their artists are getting less exposure, not more.
The "benefits" they receive from P2P, despite the fact they have not acknowledged them, are reduced.
They aren't making any more money.
Today's music is getting crappier and crappier.
It looks to me like the RIAA should be disappointed in these results. I don't see any actual direct benefit to the RIAA or its members from this.
Now when CD sales continue to slump, the RIAA will have to find something else to blame.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
The quality of your laptop soundcard may very well have something to do with the difference you hear.
I find it difficult to believe that you can hear the difference between say a good 224kbps encoded mp3 and an uncompressed file if you're not using a high end soundcard>amplifier>speaker/headphone chain.
But if you say you can hear the difference, well, I'm not going to argue with it...
Not to mention that bitchslap from the federal courts while trying to bully Verizon. So they have accomplished what exactly?
::Waits for the fluffed up unsupported cannot possibly be backed up claim to be inserted here.::
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)
Yea, everyone is changing over to MUTE, using Bittorrent or Freenet.
That should screw up some stats!
MUTE protects your privacy, unlike other networks!
Get MUTE at:
http://mute-net.sourceforge.net/
When most people see whats available on IRC, and the general high(er) quality rips, they get excited but when the see the "effort" required to get it they almost all loose interest!
That quibble aside, yes I agree with you. Taken to its logical conclusion, the best way to listen to great music is hearing great musicians play it live. So get out there and support them, dammit!
While I think that no hifi system can compete with the experience of a band playing live I think that in terms of sound quality live isn't necessarily better. Bands often play so loud that it kind of overloads your ears to the point where you don't really pick up the subtilities of the sounds. On top of that you've got to deal with limitations in p/a systems, mic spillage, room acoustics etc.
What has the RIAA been targetting? I've only heard of them suing Kazaa users, and so I assume that's all they are polling. There are many other platforms in use.
Also what are their polling tactics? Do they call people up "We are the RIAA, do you share music?" Who the hell is going to say "Why yes, would you like the new {insert generic band} album?".
I personally have not noticed a change in number of people sharing, or any individuals who have stopped. I have to cry social norming on this one. Social norming is when you lie and say people are doing what you want them to, then people will fall in line and actually do it. As with the posters at our school that say the average freshman has "0 - 2 drinks at a party", bullshit.
Because it's like going back to the bad-old days of having to upload warez before you can download any. It's a catch-22 situation in which you must supply some good warez that they don't have before you can download any. How do you seed your collection? I'd stick with good old P2P networks and let the 31337 dudez use IRC and Usenet.
This article does not describe a victory. It does not matter if downloads decline unless there is a corresponding increase in sales. Without this the only thing accomplished is to outrage a large number of fans. The real victory for fans will occur when well known bands realize they don't need RIAA any more.
hey audiophile: it's cymbals!!!
Just what we all need. Helping them "prove" what the are doing is just and effective.
Anything can be 'proven' if you extrapolate out of context, even when the ultimate conclusion is false.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's working for me, I stopped sharing and downloading. However, I also haven't bought a CD from them in uhh.... uhh.... can't remember. I used to have a MASSIVE collection of cd's. I'm only 20 years old and already stopped buying from them... they lost any potential from me. A friend of mine told me of some place about an hour drive away with about the same msuic, except much cheaper and don't deal with the recording industry. The recording industry shot themselves in the foot, much like the oil industry is doing with the price of gas (by raising prices and making people think "I wish there was some other way...").
"Do or do not. There is no try." -- Master Yoda (Half man, half muppet)
You've got a skewed view; iTunes has sold so little, most consumers aren't even aware of what it is or what it does.
DRM'd music won't win, and non-physical music will be a hard sell for 20 years.
On IRC its about 50-50 whether a server shares mp3s with leechers. With bigger files trading is expected. Allegedly. (Since I use Linux I have no desire for Appz etc.)
Basically what the RIAA has been doing is comparing MD5 hashes, as well as ID3 tags. It is entirely possible to get the same MD5 hashes if you rip the exact same song in the same format using the same bitrate/settings. (The million monkeys, million typewriters argument). And ID3 tags, how different can those get?
I hate sigs.
Why isn't it possible to redownload the music you have already paid for?
I have tried asking apple, but their feedback form has been returing Internal Server Error for the past 30 hours.
In the long run, the difference between 100 gigs and 500 gigs is about a hundred thousand tracks, and three or four hundred dollar drives.
I listen to 128 mp3s, mainly, and anything higher, I reincode down to that. I am hearing impaired, so I can't hear the difference from CD, but even 256 is indistinguishable from uncompressed CD audio to the human ear. Maybe a bat could tell the difference between the 512 that many of my friends use.
We're losing nothing. Your losing 400 gigs of harddrive space. Drives are cheap, but not enough to justify multiplying the size of your media by five just to gain 1 or 2% sound quality.
I've always used BearShare. I used to have a high speed connection and it worked great. Then I moved and am now stuck with modem. I pretty much stopped messing with it after I lost broadband, but went looking for a song a couple of months ago. Downloaded the latest copy and off we go. I got about the same (or maybe slightly better) d/l rate as I usually get from any web-type downloads.
Used to be a real pain in the butt because everything came in from a single source. Sometimes you'd get blocked or just not have enough time before they shut-off. But now everything is multi-sourced so that's not an issue. It comes with some sort of spyware something or other, but I just deleted it and went about my business. Firewalls are also handy to block that crap.
Oh, and about the music companies f'ing up the songs, I haven't experienced that either. But I usually am not looking for new, very popular tunes either.
Sneaker net has taken over P2P. I thought I had a descent collection of 14,000 tracks when I started meeting people who also have descent collections at holiday parties. make that 70 or 80,000 tracks within a month ++.
I think the damage is done and RIAA can do NOTHING about this. The network shall rebuild itself underground until new online methods occur. The rate of this method certainly exceeds previous options.
While it may be true I end up with a ton of music I don't care about, I'll also be exposed to stuff I wouldn't have ever seen if it were my choice. Cometh the age of portable USB 2.0 drives and DVD burners. horay!
I would say kazaa itself is the reason fewer people use kazaa and the same is likely true of many other networks. Unless this is the result of a secret buyout of Sharman (sounds like Charmin, as in toilet paper, uh) then the "corporate" p2p networks themselves are what's killing p2p. Napster sucked ass five years ago, still sucks today, and kazaa and its ilk are simply the logical evolution of suck ruthless exploitation.
Yes, it's true -- I really haven't downloaded as much music during the past year. But I also only purchased one CD during all of 2003, and that was Radiohead's "Hail To The Thief", which I got for my girlfriend after going to see them live in NJ a few month's ago. In fact, I went ahead and sold back all of my old CDs to http://www.wherehouse.com/, in exchange for store credit, which I then used to purchase a whole messload of DVDs.
I wonder who/what the RIAA will blame if this double-helix trend of decreasing file-sharing / decreasing CD sales continues for a few more years. In the meantime, I'll continue to purchase games and DVDs, which provide more bang for my buck than comparably-priced, more heavily restricted CDs.
Most new machines come with a cd burner... Now the kids can do this just like we used to do with tapes and lp's. Just copy the whole cd and swap with your friends.
This tax benefits mainly folks like Celine Dion and Brian Adams and whomever sings those beer commercial songs. It doesn't benefit the artists of the rest of the world.
First, it's not a tax. It's a levy, tarrif or royalty, depending on who you talk to.
Second, it is imposed by international convention just about anywhere you would like to live. http://www.socan.ca/jsp/en/resources/around_world. jsp. It is infact well-distributed around the world.
Third, they succeeded in imposing a very similar system in the U.S., it happened twelve years ago. The RIAA http://www.riaa.com/issues/licensing/default.asp is a member of the AARC, who admisters the royalties in the U.S. http://www.aarcroyalties.com/.
I don't really understand this stuff myself, but just check out the websites. They have lots of info up there about what they're doing and why.
One thing I really don't understand, is why "Happy Birthday" can demand royalties direct through AOL/Time Warner, when systems like this are in place. Urban legend?
So if they are claiming victory over illegal file sharing of music, then I guess they will have to find another excuse for declining sales when their numbers are down again this year.
Remember, when you point a finger at someone or something else, you've got three others on the same hand pointing back at yourself.
Hunter/A3
Let's not discount the fact that alot of people, through fear of the RIAA switched to Kazaa Lite ++ (or whatever it's called...) This software hides your IP, hides your share lists, etc. So it makes it look like you're not sharing files. Certainly, a mass move to this version of Kazaa would skew the "statistics".
the RIAA will ultimately win this battle
I disagree. I cannot see the RIAA overcome market economy at every country on earth. Unless prices are dropped so that it's cheaper to buy than to D/L, it is in the best interests of foreign countries NOT to adapt US IP laws.
The EC may be bought (or not, the question is still open), but there are a the Indian, Chinese, and Muslim worlds, about a billion large each, which, IMHO, are simply too large and anti-american to be bought.
Once, say, 10^8 Indians use P2P, it seems highly unlikely that its usage wouldn't diffuse back to the US.
Working for necessity's mother.
We more or less stopped using Kazaa a long time ago. The quality sucks. Instead, a group of friends and myself got together and started pooling our MP3s.
There's about 8 of us. We've all been great friends since college (some are married, some will get married one day). First thing we do when we get a CD is we rip it to MP3 and then copy it up to the server. The server has full and protected internet access via WWW or FTP and we even have a kick-ass web interface for streaming (our site is basically what my.mp3.com could've been).
We don't share our site with anybody. We don't distribute our MP3s. Nobody has access to our server, nobody other than us will ever get access to our server.
We pay 1/8th the price of a CD, we have complete albums, complete songs all ripped at 128k (old) to 192k (most everything ripped recently).
I see no reason to change, and this has been FAR MORE effective than anything Kazaa or Napster ever did for us. Sure, we still pay some money, but spread over 8 people it's FAR more cost effective. In fact, I'd even consider the price reasonable finally.
How many CD's have they sold as a result? I don't think anyone who had thousands of mp3's is willing to go out and buy 50 or 100 cds because they quit filesharing. More likely, Mr. RIAA, people just aren't listening to your music anymore.
Or we *gasp* actually listen to the music? The difference between a 128-bit mps and a 192/160-bit mp3 is night and day. Compare that to a .wav or the iTunes .m4p (ac3 format) and there's a still an incredible quality difference.
MP3's sound washed out with no feeling if you listen to any rich music. Even the dance tunes which are all computer generated lose significant base and treble when converted to an mp3.
Personally, I have no problem with the RIAA tactics working on the general public. However, it doesn't mean that the tactics they're employing are the best (or even somewhere among the better) possible tactics for the situation.
Just because something is effective doesn't mean it's good.
There is an old German legend of Till Ulspringer, the prototypical conman, who sold a cheeseshop owner a mousetrap which was 100% guaranteed to kill all mice. It was a large block of wood and a mallet.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Maybe everybody already has every song ever recorded.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
A new nationwide phone survey of 1,358 Internet users from November 18-December 14 by the Pew Internet & American Life Project showed that the percentage of music file downloaders had fallen to 14% (about 18 million users) from 29% (about 35 million)...
Over the next 6 months, expect the RIAA to officially request the names of each and every person who participated in the poll, so that they too can be sued/threatened.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
I've always wondered:
People talk about the focus of the RIAA being primarily upon Kazaa. But what's the effect on other networks, like eDonkey, Overnet, Gnutella?
Has usage decreased?
IS the RIAA monitoring other networks?
But at the same time I completely stopped buying cd's about 2 years ago also.
I didn't bail out of P2P because of the RIAA. I bailed out because of cable prices I can't afford in this economy. That, and I got pretty much everything I wanted from Napster before they pulled the plug. For a lot of people I know, it was just a fad. Theres only one person out of the people I know who fileshare who has even mentioned the RIAA to me, and he's still up.
It would only really be working if it were improving the record companies' bottom lines. If they managed to kill P2P completely, only to discover that piracy is not the problem with their bottom lines, could you describe that as a success?
The eDonkey network also seems to have a lot fewer singles shared than WinMX, partly because of eDonkey servers' limit of about 500 shared files per user. Music tends to be shared as full albums instead, which is harder for dial-up users to swallow.
RIAA vs. Mob -- Summary
Music Industry - business as usual, target young audience,expand control of promotion and outlets."Control the supply AND demand of 'cool'" mentality.
P2P - dot bomb technology developed for business finds popularity among the young. File swapping finds new niche. Mob rule free-for-all. Suspension of moral judgment.
RIAA - response with "cut nose off, spite face" strategy. DRM fiasco. Litigation carpet bombing. Reduction in new products. Repackaging of the dead: Cher, Ozzy, Fleetwood Mac...brilliant.
Multiple attempts at "pay-per-song" leads to the first winner: itunes - developed by a small computer manufacturer known more for it's advertising campaigns than quality products. A fad is born. Walmart, Napster, et. al. jumps into the zero profit game.
Music Industry experiences a dead-cat-bounce from recent fad and is praised for it's successful "Two Pronged" strategy.
So, does this about sums it up? Lowest form of Corporation Vs. Lowest form of Consumer. My favorite part: the term "leech". No, the RIAA doesn't use this term; it's used by those who have no sense of irony.
Personally I think the starting point should be a quarter a song to encourage "browsing" and artists to make more music. Seriously, that's the "public good" portion of copyright - content for the public. Increasing the volume of production demand will drop other prices too, and maybe we'll get the sort of thing that DVD buyers get all the time like files of commentaries on the songs, songs that didn't get finished, the bassist playing his favorite Burt Bacharat tune, or whatever. If you drop the price on all of it and basically sell interesting garbage you're finally getting into the spirit of the internet I think. If the band wants to still sell overpriced cds though, I think touring would be a great place for it- along with the overpriced tickets, tshirts, beer, and food.
As for Happy birthday, thats a little fucked up. The words are copyrighted (yeah ANYTHING can get a copyright as long as its original)
The lyrics of "Happy Birthday" have about two words of difference from those of "Good Morning To All". Are you sure that changing two words counts as creating an "original" work worthy of its own copyright? Has this issue been litigated?
I thought that the more connected, efficient and pervasive a global communications system was a sign of progress and intellectual exchange. Are we destined to go back to the BBS days if the internet is gonna suck? In the Dark Ages, isolationism was the name of the game, and look what happened to science. At this point in human existence, we need more sharing of ideas and information rather than less. Learning doesnt work well in a vacuum. Does all human art, achievement, and learning require a ticket for admission? What is the overall quality of free vs pay? Do you really get what you pay for? The MPAA, RIAA, etc. goals seem to be to legitimize their racket upon all human creativity.
The biggest trick the devil pulled was letting lawyers become politicians so they can write the laws.
fwiw, the RIAA would consider that a victory. Your community of a dozen or so users is far less of a threat than a community of millions.
This isn't exactly a swinger's club, where you don't mess around with others. Private networks with properly tagged, high-quality, no-junk stuff is moving a lot of stuff around, and each of those members can trade with other people (or even other groups).
That's where it all started (friends swapping CDs of mp3s, in the age of modems) and I suspect that's where it'll end up as well, with an online network of friends. I trade with my 50 friends, they trade with 50 each... it doesn't take much to make it work. All you really need is a bit more bandwidth to spare so people can hook eachother up "My friend Joe is seeking X, my friend Bob has X, I can get it from Bob and send to Joe", and the snowball starts rolling...
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Don't get me wrong... I am completely in favor of this level of skepticism. I just wish that it could be applied consistently, regardless of whether or not we are inclined at the outset to agree with the conclusion.
Yeah, their tactics are working - I've totally stopped buying CDs.
you are a fucking moron if you can't read the sarcasm in this post.
Have you heard of Asperger syndrome, which negatively affects the ability to recognize sarcasm? Do you claim that all persons with Asperger syndrome have elementary school intellect?
I held high hopes that folks would use file sharing as a way to get around organizations like the RIAA and use it to find artists they liked and would end up supporting them.
Or become artists themselves, except for one thing: How can they know whether the songs they have written are in fact original and not subconsciously copied from another song (see Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music)?
Sorry but irc is completely free. If you spend any amount of time on there you will quickly find that %90 of channels with a large number of people are warez channels. They are leech warez channels at that. Try checking it out sometime.
because all we trade are indie bands that gave us the rights to trade their songs freely
What indie bands are you talking about that can make this claim? Doesn't the songwriter (if not a member of the band) get eight cents per copy under U.S. law (or a comparable royalty under other countries' copyright laws)? And if the songwriter is a member of the band, how can he or she make sure that the songs are original?
Are you seriously suggesting that the RIAA will infultrate your site and falsely claim that one of your indy tracks was really by one of their memebers?
Almost, but wrong organization. Not the RIAA but the NMPA, the National Music Publishers' Association. An NMPA member may claim that some of the indie recordings are unauthorized covers of copyrighted songs.
(nit: Indie == not signed with a major publisher. Indy == located in Indianapolis.)
I run a node on the gnutella net, and I never see BearShare nodes anymore. What I do see are LimeWire, gtk-gnutella, giFT-Gnutella, and a few other less common vendors. I have no idea what happened to BearShare, but I don't think it's a good representation of what's going on in the gnutella net as a whole.
if you pay $1 for the first three songs on an album, you can get the rest for $5.
The iTunes Music Store already does this to a point. Entire albums cost $10 if they're under 80 minutes, or more for multi-disc sets.
Personally I think the starting point should be a quarter a song to encourage "browsing" and artists to make more music.
After the cost of distribution and promotion, along with eight cents per track for the songwriter (as mandated by U.S. CARP and foreign counterpart agencies), what does the artist keep out of this?
I have results to share from my own "pew" study... it concludes that the RIAA's tactics STINK.
...isn't it only "working" if the RIAA is seeing more CD sales?
"...lawsuit strategy has successfully reduced P2P filesharing."
Maybe P2P is down for the same reason CD Sales are down; there's nothing good being released.
I was never on KaZaA. I started out on WinMX, which was an opennap client before it grew its own P2P network, which even in 2004 still isn't polluted. The thing WinMX has that BitTorrent and eMule lack is that BT and eMule are optimized for a few files of 20 MB to 1 GB (e.g. whole albums and ISOs) rather than many files in the 4 MB to 10 MB range (e.g. singles).
A mp3 (lossy compression) ripped from a 44.1 pcm stream will sound worse than a flac, shn, or ape (lossless compression) taken from the same stream.
Just as the parent post argued that a CD is equally good as a DVD audio, that is to say people are indifferent to it, you can make the same argument about mp3 vs flac. It contains less information, but does it sound any worse? Or the same?
The entire point is to express every tone the human ear can percieve, using as little information as possible. And while the mp3 psychoacustic algorithm may not be perfect, I can guarantee you that the WAV format (or lossless compressed versions thereof) is not a "perfect" format. There's considerable information in a WAV file that the human ear doesn't hear.
That is to say, it should be possible to create a format that takes less space than a WAV (remove some information and *then* losslessly compress would be smaller than FLAC/SHN etc. too), but that sounds just as good. Of course, it's much easier to go for overkill than to find such a format.
Kjella
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Maybe the reason the rates have dropped is because we all already have over 200GB of stuff on our disks and don't need to download anything else published by a RIAA company. Maybe we are only downloading indie stuff from networks they can't see.
Also, here's what I don't see in this report: Did their sales go up? Or did they just manage to turn people off music altogether?
I have slowed down my down-loading becuase I have finally begun to catch up to the current and I find I really don't want any of the current music. Once I filled out my old collection, ie got mp3's of my old tapes and records, I began to see less and less reason ro download things. Its not that I am afraid of the RIAA, and I doubt their tactics are succeeding unless putting out crappy music to discourage pirating is a strategy :)
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
Writing their own songs
How can a novice songwriter be sure that the songs he is writing are actually his own songs and not something subconsciously copied from somebody else's songs? I seem to remember that another Slashdot user wrote an in-depth journal entry about this, but at the moment, I forget who.
In the last article, people were readily accepting that p2p-sharing was HELPING the music industry simply because sales were up in Australia.
But mention that downloading goes down as the RIAA lawsuits go up, and suddenly "correlation does not equal causation."
"Sufferin' succotash."
So, in light of the oh-so effective lawsuits, have the actual cd sales skyrocketed?
That most ppl have already dled all the music they want by now. So it makes sense that file trading would go down; how many 30 year olds are going to trade Spear's latest album? Once you've dled all the music you like and wanted, its only new stuff that you would be dling. And let's face it, there isn't that much out there that's new that's worth going out to Kazaa to get. Lesser decent new stuff, lesser dling.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
You got to love the small view of the P2P sharing that the music industry has. It seems they will only look at the simple 'napster' like software and not worry about anything else... Has anyone else noticed the sudden growth of bittorrents? I have and noticed that is works a lot better then the old way. I would put money down that people are leaving the more visible way of downloading music and going deeper underground and much harder to follow and keep track of total number of downloads.
It was a big step for some people to get music for free of the internet. But once they do and they see that the service that they use has been compromised...RIAA watching what they do... they will move to something else.
RIAA your in a losing battle, join Napster and maybe you will live!!!
http://nicotine.thegraveyard.org/
I get my internet service from the college that I work for. So far they have done the right thing about not turning information over to the RIAA (and all the rest) but I just don't trust them enough to keep using Kazzaa and other public p2p networks.
So I switched to a private network. I have a friend in Hong Kong who has been supplying us all with the latest tunes and movies. I stopped watching TV because he has been supplying all the shows that I like.
You can record a CD using full 96dB of dynamic range pretty easily. Have you ever wondered why nobody records them this way? Because people prefer compressed (in terms of dynamic range) sound. It sounds "loud" and "even" (which for 99.5% of folks out there equals to "good") to them. Thus to please the crowd sound engineers compress the heck out of CDs. If they didn't you wouldn't need a volume knob on your stereo, 'cause you would always have to run it at max. volume to keep low-level signal (commonly referred to as background detail) within audible range of your hearing.
Filesharing has changed, though I view it more as the following, as opposed to the RIAA's witchhunt:
- spyware built by corporations and individuals not associated with the RIAA
- horrible networks that can't hold a candle to the original napster incarnation.
- less techno savvy folks sitting on T3 connections (due to a |slight| decline in available IT jobs in the "new millenium") willing to share their collections.
I like BitTorrent, however I see it as a tool to share Open Source works rather than to exploit the RIAA's latest and greatest FadWare.
:-( --- argh. Despair, I owe again.
I want to know where the hell they get their data from... I'm not really going to put much faith in their stats though, as these are the same people who claim that only 13% of people who use the internet have been to an "adult website".
Be careful! Bears shouldn't consume large furry dogs.
I have to download 10 versions of a song just to get the "real" version of it
WinMX does not have this problem. Set WinMX to "MP3/OGG at 160 kbps or greater" and you won't get the Crapster typical of FastTrack or Gnutella based networks.
The RIAA's main concern should be increasing records sales. Just because file sharing is used less does not mean that people are buying CDs instead. It may very well be that people are so pissed off by the RIAA's tactics that the RIAA is actually hurting their records sales a lot more than they are helping them, or just cutting even, in which case they are wasting a lot of money in legal fees.
iTunes, etc would be great if they worked directly with artists or small labels.
The iTunes Music Store has in fact begun to work with CD Baby (though the details of the agreement remain confidential). But when big organizations begin charging to distribute recordings that another big organization's legal department has not "approved", the sheet music publishers begin to smell a proverbial rat. What safeguards exist to prevent another Bright Tunes?
RIAA's tactics, of course, has changed whether or not people will file-share.
Hell, I quit myself and I told my friends and family to quit until the whole thing blows over (which, after the court case knocking out RIAA vs. Verizon) it seems close to doing.
However, everytime I told people this, I also told them about the false arrests, and the fact that they're suing 12 year olds from the projects, and said "If you want them to stop, stop buying CDs."
Then I point them at CDBaby.
I've bought more albums in the past 8 months since they've started this crap than I have in my entire life - and NONE of them have been from RIAA member labels.
Oh, also...
That doesn't mean that stopping P2P stops downloading. Newsgroups and IRC are still going strong, and are only bolstered by this.
The RIAA's strategy just doesn't work on a fundimental level. The only people who are going to be informed enough of the strategy to be frightened are going to be frightened enough to be pissed at the labels and not buy their stuff.
-- Funksaw
though I'm not sure that the damage awards at .25 a song would be crippling.
Try up to $30,000 per work accidentally infringed.
setting up a searchable place where you could "verify" your lyrics by phrase and chorus to make sure you weren't completely trampling someone else's idea
Google makes lyrics searching easy. However, the precedent-setting case involved subconscious copying of musical notes, which Google does not index.
I expect to see a positive correlation between downloads and CD purchases. I could be wrong but there are logical reasons to posit such a relationship.
So, what will they do when they discover that CD sales are suffering because fewer people are finding new and interesting music through downloads?
There are so many reasons for fall offs or increases in p2p usage. You cannot with any degree of certainty attribute these 'cycles' completely to RIAA propaganda. What about the limited content? Unless something new comes out that a person is interested in, how long will it be before they have downloaded everything they want? A year ago, I was downloading CD's off KDX and bittorrent and DirectConnect and Hotline and gnutella and kazaa(when a client became avail for os x). I have most of the stuff I want.
How many people are going to give an honest answer the question "Do you regularly break the law?"
Do you think this number of people would be increased or decreased by conspicuous searches for and lawsuits against breakers of said law?
Seriously, they might as well said "And our results have a confidence of 95%, based on the answers to the question 'No, really, are you telling the truth? You can be honest.'"
The enemies of Democracy are
The Pew Study, huh? Something about this really stinks...
Ba dum tsh.
First off, I didn't say it wasn't possible, I said that at low levels you get significantly more distortion in the sound versus recording at higher levels. Compare a 1mV and a 100mV signals run through a DAC and then a ADC, with the 1mV amplified to the same output level as the 100mV. the 1mV signal will be significantly more distorted due to the staircase nature of a digital signal - If you assume the DAC has a step of .1mV, your amplified 1mV will have a step of 10mV after amplification, meaning you've lost a lot of resolution.
As for compression; heard of it, understand your argument, pretty sure it introduces even more distortion of the music. Personally I don't care as I listen to older stuff that is far less or even not compressed.
You also chose to ignore the other factors I mentioned - jitter and harmonics - which are also both important factors.
Jw
No, it doesn't. Artists get none of the blank media levy. Even the Canadian recording industry gets none of the blank media levy, surprisingly enough. The CPCC (organization responsible for collecting and distributing the levy) keeps all of it for internal uses (salaries, administration, and advertising).
How would finding you downloading an mp3 on kazaa reveal every mp3 on your hard drive? Maybe if you had them all shared, but that's the same as if you had a web site set up with links to bittorrents of every album you own.
I'd rather be lucky than good.
Seriously I think I have every song I could ever want. I haven't had to load up eMule for a weeks. Christmas songs, books on tape, science lectures... it's all there. I suppose I'm getting old, but nothing I've heard on the radio in the past month sounds any good at all.
My last batch of downloads I can recall was trying to find something new. Polynesian and asian music, some french stuff I can't understand, but it sounds good. I wonder how many other people have sort of had their fill and are taking a break.
And CD sales have sky rocketed right? Lars was finally able to affford that 15th platinum plated ferrari for his collection.
ofcourse it does! I mean, look at Soviet Union in the 20's till 90's, Germany in the 30's till middle 40's, USA currently. It all seems to work, doesn't it?
The future problem organizations like the RIAA face is not that all youths are savy enough to get around their roadblocks. The problem is that the generation of children growing up with computers (and the massive amounts of information they store and create) do not value the "cost" of any particular piece of information. To children of the new generation there is way too much info to sift through, so paying a high price for ANY infomation is not respected. Just looking at the disparity in age in any poll concerning file sharing proves that point. (aka many polls show that people under the age of 35 usually believe filesharing to be ok, while those over 35 usually don't).
Its important to note that since filesharing began, the role of nonbusiness computers in the hands of youth went from being a thing to serf the internet and play random games with to being a do it all media box. (on a side note, I believe that the difficulty in playing and obtaining media files is a huge roadblock to desktop linux. until linux has kazaa (or any way to easily copy info) and well formed codec packages to make playing that info VERY easy-as in Windows XP easy- people college age or younger will not want to use it.) Ask an college girl- usually the voice of future technoilliterate population, and they will tell you how much better their computer became when they could actually do something cool with it (like it or not, free media is cool).
Even if media companies succeed in making it harder to trade info, they will never succeed in shifting morals back to a point where their intellectual property is respected.
Open Source Sushi
No, he was right the first time. Given the stuff that's out there these days, the more of it you lose, the better.
I know I am not do downloading as much as I used to, but only becuase I can't really think of more music that i want. Maybe everyones had their fill?
Anyone who has browsed kazaa recently (not me, obviously ;)) -- has surely noticed a dramatic increase in those files which play the first 20 seconds or so and then fade out or turn into loud pops and screeches (possibly designed to destroy speakers?), along with the other factors alread noted - people become more willing to pay for a song on something like iTMS for $0.99 rather than hunt for a 1/2 hour to find a good quality version of the desired song.
www.freshlymixed.com
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
That's why they have that steep sinc(x) filter after DAC. The signal is reproduced EXACTLY as it was recorded - nice'n'smooth, accurate in amplitude and phase. See Shannon-Kotelnikov's theorem for proof. It's hard to grasp the concept of restoring high-frequency components of the signal by just a few measurements per sine cycle, but all this stuff is well known and mathematically proven.
I have kazaa data available. If you want more then a graphic or the last two months, let me know, I can provide you with almost 2 years of data.
How about the simple fact that if you're talking about a 16-bit ADC/DAC you only have 65536 possible discrete values that you can record, and everything in between is rounded off to one of those values. If you assume the DAC can handle 5V, that means incremens of 0,076mV, and a smaller increment will be lost or overestimated in rounding.
Jw
...a fad that is going away all on its own.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
...come to think of it.
Now that you can legally buy music online, people are (or atleast seem to be).
Why did it take the misuc industry meatheads so long to offer a legal alternative for something people clearly wanted (and were willing to pay for)?
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
Most of the college kids already have large collections from the Napster days.
This is why downloading has slowed, we have all the songs that are good.
Isn't it funny how all the albums of system of a down (who *hate* the system and are supposibly anarchists) except 1 show up to be provided by the RIAA?
Crazy
RIAA RADAR
We're talking about 76 MICROVOLT here for chrissakes. That's well below the noise floor of any acoustic system, not to mention any kind of audible threshold.
I meant to say "audio system" acoustic systems don't have any noise floor by themselves. :-)
That's really not true... A simple CD will have better range and s/n than most Mixer/PAs used in live performances (not to mention the speakers, etc).
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant