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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.
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.
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!!
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.
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!
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
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.
... 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.
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.
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
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.
...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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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?
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.
Posted yesterday on slashdot (time for a repost;)
;)
Actually, the sales are down by 20%. Popular filesharing is down by 30%. Offcourse, this is not proof. You have to take into account iTunes and likes, and the decline of the economy.
But I can't help and smile
...blackmail works - what's new?
Mike
Cloudburst Bar
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
no matter how lossless a recording of [insert name of boy band here] it still sounds fucking awful to me ;)
---Methodology---
The Pew study was based on a poll.
I believe that one might be forgiven if they were skeptical that the change in the data is due to 'lip service' rather than representing an actual change in downloading habits. It may be that RIAAs lawsuit strategy has not altered downloading behavior so much as it's influenced the respondents forthrightness in answering questions about downloading.
"Oh drat these computers, they're so naughty and so complex, I could pinch them." --Marvin the Martian
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!
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.
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)
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.
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?
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.
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 have results to share from my own "pew" study... it concludes that the RIAA's tactics STINK.
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).
Ever since the RIAA started suing little girls, when a stranger calls me on the phone to ask if I download music from the internet I now say "no - and what's more I never have" instead of "yes, in fact I'm doing it right now."
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
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.
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
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
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.
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.
...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.