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Study: MP3 Sharing Not Serious Threat To CD Sales
pkaral writes "The two distinguished gentlemen Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee have most likely made RIAA executives choke on their lunches. Those two economists at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill have done the research and the math on how much CD sales are actually hurt by P2P sharing. The answer: A whopping one CD per 5,000 files downloaded. Needless to say, RIAA are already trying to discredit the study."
Now I expect a full apology and retraction for the demonization P2P has gotten from the RIAA, et. al. They should be trying to increase downloads like radio stations try to increase listeners.
Record labels should distribute approved MP3 tracks, then offer them as singles on CD, just like the radio stations. They should closely scrutinize the downloading habits, then create an album based on the popularity of certain tracks.
They don't see this as a tool, only as a threat. They're idiots.
TV Production should do this too. If Viacom released official BitTorrents of Enterprise, complete with banner ads at the bottom of the screen, I'd download them. The banner ads would make me more likely to delete it when I'm done watching it, which is what they'd want, right. Then they can still sell me the DVD.
That'll probably never happen, though.
A programmer is a machine for converting coffee into code.
RIAA: File sharing hurts our beloved industry.
Student A: Have you heard that new song from ? It's awesome!!!!
Student B: Yeah I'm going to see them next week in LA!! Road Trip!!!
Student C: I'm going to buy that album they put out last year.
Student D: Me too!
Student A: Yeah it was largely underrated, I guess.
Harvard Prof Guy: Consumption of music increases dramatically with the introduction of file sharing...
RIAA: Harvard SUCKS!
One CD isn't whopping, dO I sEnSe a BiT oF sArCaSiM?
This doesn't hide the fact that it is still stealing. Plus, if you say A whopping one CD per 5,000 files downloaded, then how many files have been downloaded? (fives of) Billions? Then that's millions of CDs. So there is an effect, however small. If the study showed that listening to mp3s made people MORE LIKELY to buy a CD, then the study might help the napster community. If there is any lose, however insignificant, its just another nail in the coffin.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
two distinguished gentlemen Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee have most likely made RIAA executives choke on their lunches
Thats all you have to do to be distinguished around here...
"If you think you have things under control, you're not going fast enough." --Mario Andretti
I feel the best thing about P2P is that you learn about other music that you don't hear on the radio. This is what scares the RIAA the most, not a loss of sales but of a loss of control on what you listen to. If people start listening to independent artists they will no longer just listen to britney spears or limp bizkit or whatever crap the RIAA forces down peoples radio.
I've never had a reason to like a laywer before :D
I have found out about so many bands that I like that I would buy their cds or see them in concert because of mp3 sharing. I never would just go buy a cd of some band I have never heard of; but I can download an mp3 or 2 and discover that I really like the band. I'm glad that there are people studying it from the opposite angle of the RIAA.
"Wisdom is not a product of schooling but of the life-long attempt to acquire it." -Albert Einstein
I love it when people pounce on one study that happens to agree with their viewpoint and discredit studies that contradict them.
I'm talking to you guys, not the RIAA.
Free over the air radio has always been considered a promotional vehicle for music artists, that hearing a song on the radio is more likely to inspire sales than prevent it.
More or less, at this 1 CD per 5,000 downloads number, downloading is being called a push, it gives just about as much as it takes away from the recording industry.
I think what the RIAA is really scared of is the fact that P2P distribution might allow an artist to gain fame and make money without going through the "major label system" and that'd be the death of that system. So, it's not that P2P threatens CD sales as much as it threatens RIAA-member CD sales by replacing them with something else.
RIAA:
Obviously, these "economists" are just a bunch of nerds with too much time on their hands. What kind of degree does it take to teach at Harvard? A PhD? Like that means anything. Our marketing guy has a Masters. These professors don't even have any platinum records.
There are probably no study in the world that could convince RIAA that P2P is good for business. They've made up their minds.
BUT, it might convince lawmakers to whink twise, and it shows the common man what they already know: if you want something that is good, you'll pay for it. If you got a broad selection to sample, you'll more likely find something YOU like.
Too bad that the people who have already settled with the RIAA didn't have this information in hand, at the very least, it could have lessened their settlement.
File-Sharing != Threat to Music Sales
The RIAA just doesn't get it.
Opera Watch - An Opera browser blog.
Maybe its not a threat economically, but your still enjoying the fruits of the musician's labor without paying for it.
Slashdot, always the reliable defenders of piracy.
Don't forget NEW SALES due to people finding songs they like via MP3's.
Just like radio.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
of whether P2P hurts CD sales, the issue that still needs to be dealt with is the legallity and morality/ethics of the issue. Perhaps in light of this laws or business practices need to be modified but until such time people should not be encouraged by this to behave in an illegal and unethical/immoral manner.
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. -Martin Luther
it's great that harvard et al is supporting what pretty much everyone on slashdot already knows.
these riaa articles are now even more predictable than the sco ones. at least with sco you can try and guess what incredibly (and ambitiously) stupid move they are going to pull next; with the riaa we could probably mouth the words as they're talking.
Larry Rosin, the president of Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Media Research, said ...
"Anybody who says that the Internet has not affected sales is just not paying attention to what is going on out there," he said. "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?"
I think everyone agrees that the Internet has affected CD sales. What they (RIAA) don't get is that it can have a very positive impact on music sales and marketing. It opens a new way to sell music, which the RIAA has failed to take advantage of in any meaningful way. If they were to embrace the possibilities I think they could increase sales dramatically.
SCO, Microsoft, P2P, what's your hot button?
legitimise unauthorised sharing of copyright material, so please dont think it does. Unauthorised sharing is still illegal and should be dealt with, regardless of wether or not it increases sales, if the copyright holders want to deal with it.
If these same guys had determined that sharing hurt CD sales massively, would you accept it? Or would you scream it is "flawed"? Of course this study is automatically found correct, it supports the one result you want. Therefore it "has" to be correct.
Why doesn't Slashdot just simply admit that any study that finds P2P to hurt CD sales is to be considered bogus? You have to take the good with the bad if you want any credibility.
Let's end the charade.
There must be a zillion articles & posts by now explaining that mp3s and p2p and CD burners and "the internet" aren't bad for music sales. Can we go back to "News... Stuff that matters"?
there's no place like ~
This is not a troll. I really am interested in your logic.
How about these.
You bring your car to the garage. It gets fixed and the bill comes to some amount of money. You are expected to pay the mechanic this amount. Lets say it was all labor as well and no parts were replaced. You use your extra key and get your car back some night without paying the mechanic for the work he did. Did you just steal from him or did you just violate his right to collect the money you owe him. What is he no longer in possession of in this example? The car was always yours, you just took it back without paying the bill. If the answer is nothing then you did not steal from him although I think a court would disagree.
The following argument is a bit absurd but the point is made. Don't think about the details, think about the concept. Ignore that the charge uses $20 worth of electricity or the outlet is on the street.
Since many people claim that theft can only occur when a physical object is taken then how about electricity. Assume a city produces their own electricity via a solar grid. Say you are walking down the street. You see an outlet. You decide that you need to give your cell phone a quick charge and plug it in. You leave your cell phone there (because this is a perfect world and it won't get stolen) and it charges. When you get back there is a city employee there holding your cell phone (He unplugged it to plug his whatever in) telling you that you owe the City $20 for the electricity you used (your cell phone takes a lot of juice to charge). Did you just steal from the city or not? You didn't take anything "physical" from them.
It seems like every time an unbiased study is conducted, it has consistently suggested that P2P not only doesn't harm CD sales but at times has even helped the overall sale of CDs. I have only heard the opposite from the recording industry and the media outlets that get their data from them.
Do androids dream of electric sheep?
Earth to RIAA: i've bought albums on account of one song i've heard off of p2p networks. do some math.
But is anyone surprised by this? I mean really deep down surprised. What hurts CD sales is the shoddy quality of the entertainment on said CD's. If I wanted to hear one good song surrounded by 12 crappy songs, I'd turn on the radio.
Don't get too hyper that the RIAA was off on the numbers. They can still spin doctor that a loss is occuring.
is of course lagging music quality! If Metallica's St. Anger is not selling like hotcakes it's because it's abject, utter crap, not because you can get it for free on the internet.
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
You mean I actually would have bought 4 CD's... Amazing.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
...A study by Sharman Networks shows that CD sales are hurting file downloads on their popular file sharing network Kazaa, and have been for some time. Sharman Networks proposes a tax on every CD sold to accomodate for these losses...
You may think they are trying to keep what market and distribution methods are available at a cartel. While that's what they are publicly doing, I doubt the masterminds behind the member companies are that perversely blind.
You have a bunch of big corporations, that by definition are not going to be able to react quickly to new changes in the environment. There's layers of bureaucracy within, and many times (think Sony Computer vs Sony Music) the left hand wants to slap the wrists of the right. I think they're just looking for a way to take advantage of the new system but don't have a clean implementation ready to put into production. So they make loud threatening noises and otherwise put up a front.
Then they come out with a new system that everybody had already proposed ten times over three years ago. And everybody, especially the cartel members, end up happy.
"Intel will continue to use its own IA64. No, we are not going to use AMD's x86-64 extensions."
Doing the Right Thing should not be preempted by making a buck.
These studies have said the same thing for a while that mp3 downloading has not affected or actually helped CD sales. However, the RIAA still sues people to try and halt mp3 downloading using fear of prosecution and saying mp3 downloading is damaging the executive profit margins. Someone's not telling the truth because they can't be right, and multiple sources have gone against the RIAA so far.
My issue with the situation is when the RIAA going to actually perform their own study and see for themselves that downloaders aren't pilfering from their pockets? I want the RIAA to prove to me that mp3 downloading is hurting CD sales.
I think this information needs to be approached skeptically, as there's no way to measure reliably "what would have happened." Given a lack of P2P sharing, can you say for certain how many CDs you would have bought/would not have bought? Of course not.
If CD sales for a popular download increase by 2%, can you ever prove they wouldn't have gone up 3% if not for downloading?
I just don't think this can be proven either way.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
I'm not one to advocate theft in any form, but I do find it funny that one can legally record and share copies of music from the radio, XM Radio, Television (via, say, cable or sat TV's non-MTV music channels), etc... and many of these sources are digital quality to boot.
Like I said, theft isn't cool in any form, but what makes one digital format (say, recordings off of DirecTV's Music Choice(tm) ) blessed when compared to another (The Internet)
I suspect that in legality, it is a matter of the RIAA getting a 'vig' from tape sales, broadcasters, et al, but in moral or technical principle there really isn;t all that much difference.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
The reason I stopped buying CDs and continue to download mp3s is because of how the RIAA reacted to the situation. Many others feel the same why. Why should we buy CDs? I'll support the artists by going to their concerts instead.
They like to jump around like a big angry monkey and spread their lies and misinformation to get the public (and government) to see them as "poor me, people aren't buying our music" instead of coming to the realization of "Hey, maybe the music we're putting out is junk."
Then they huff and puff, throw lawsuits left and right in an attempt to SCARE people into buying their products. Coercion, anyone?
I think we've all known for quite some time that mp3 downloading is equivalent to when recordable cassette tapes were introduced. There was a frenzy from the industry as if it was the end of music and sales as they knew it. It wasn't.
Now we're seeing the truth.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
"Its still piracy," you say. What is?
:)
Do people illegally download copyright material? Sure. But --
Is it piracy when I download out-of-copyright old radio programs*? Or sample songs from bands who specifically encourage this? What about lectures stored on a Morpheus server in L. Lessig's campus office?
Both "downloading" and "p2p" can mean a lot of things. I plan to buy a CD of Nero Wolfe MP3s in part because of the excellent episodes I've downloaded so far.
Ah, well.
timothy
* Orson Welles' radio stuff is pretty incredible; his presentation of Dracula in particular is great
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
Two economists != two laywers though both tend to have their heads an equal distance up their ___
;)
Sky often described as 'blue'
RIAA,MPAA and SCO still suffer from delusions of sustainable profit via litigation
'Open Source Software' community remains fragmented Microsoft called 'evil' by some
Apple hardware percieved as 'expensive'
Intel based hardware discoved to fast, moderately reliable, and disposable.
okay enough stoopid jokes
foreach ($monopoly_action as $headline)I personally have bought more CD's because I discovered a band I had never heard of via mp3 download.
{$knowledge = beat($headline);}
function beat($deadhorse)
{if($deadhorse){return "jelly";}}
Just as irrigation is the lifeblood of the Southwest, lifeblood is the soup of cannibals. -- Jack Handy
File-sharing music has hurt sales. Because now you don't need to drop a bundle of cash on an album before realizing that the cd sucks and never listening to it again.
psmylie's dictionary: Godzillion (noun) Any number large enough to destroy Tokyo
Plus, the study showed that file swapping of popular songs actually increased sales of popular CD's. Too bad that not so popular ones were affected more. I'd have loved it if they had been helped as well.
They music industry needs to abandon this archaic album system, and just make singles. This will be easier to new bands to start, plus they wont have to make more garbage, and we wont have to listen to it.
The only thing that will convinve legislators to choose the common man over the recording industry is an equally funded lobbying group... not likely
It seems to me that the RIAA does actually realize filesharing and p2p help sales, but since it is still an "illegal" activity, they need to look like they're combating it, otherwise it could be taken as a sign that it's ok to steal their bread and butter, in which case sales probably would drop. It's a bit of a system... p2p increases sales, but needs to be "fought" in order to keep p2p increasing sales, and from the RIAA point of view, if a few nice people get sued in the process, all the better for the RIAA.
Sig!
Okaaaaayyyy,
...
If 1,000,000 files are downloaded per day -- just for example, and not at all unreasonable -- that's 200 CDs per day that the RIAA loses.
That's roughly 6,060 CDs per month, or over 72 thousand CDs per year.
Now go to them and tell them that this is not at all a concern and that they should just shut up.
This study is not heeelllllpiiinnnng
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
RIAA points to data showing that CD sales fell from a high of more than $13.2 billion in 2000 to $11.2 billion in 2003
[me] Who can I blame for my stocks, mutual funds and 401k falling during this timeframe.
[RIAA] Those bad people we've been talking about downloading music.
[me] So the tech bubble was just hype?
[RIAA] Yes and soon as we start making more money we'll refill coffers with funds.
[me] You mean from those $3,000 lawsuits from people that are buying your music.
[RIAA] Err, uh, ahem...
[me] I see so your working for the little guy now?
[RIAA] Err, uh, aheeem.....
You think it goes something likes that?
Available in PDF format via Koleman Strumpf's site.
Well considering I have about 1200 mp3s and haven't bought a CD since 1999, its good to know that I've only cost the industry one-fifth of a CD.
Yeah right. Get real. I'm not going to buy anymore CDs because I like my free music, but if I didnt have it I would have probably bought 15-20 CD's over the past 5 years.
Not a lot I know compared to some people, but at least I can admit they've legitimately lost 20 CD's of my business.
Instead of circle jerking on slashdot--if you really care about this issue, send a copy of the study to your local congress-critters. Yes, it's a drop in the bucket compared to what the RIAA shovels at them, but it's at least more tangable than "mp3s @r3 t3h r0x0r" and it's a damned sight better than nothing!
You can assert and assert and the courts believe you because as I've said before, the courtroom is not a technical place. It is ruled by the dollar and by an older generation that does not understand the technology it is ruling on. To a degree, the generation that rules the courtrooms is the one that grew big business and believes in it.
The big companies assert, and hope that settlements occur before someone with pockets or a voice can prove them wrong. They just hope to keep the only people with voices within the big business realm.
1 CD per 5,000 files.
That should show the RIAA how hard it is to find decent music these days.
Quality. Not quantity.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7979543 .htm
that P2P causes Cancer?
I realize it is popular Slashdot dogmatism to insist that filesharing doesn't harm CD sales, and this may be true now, but what about in the future as bandwidth increases?? The RIAA might be evil, but they are not completely stupid. Right now, downloading songs one by one and tracking down every song of an album is time-consuming. But the RIAA realize that it is only a matter of time until it is faster and more convenient to download an entire album then go to a music store. When that time comes, their current business model will be borked. Other than distribution, the only service the record companies provide is marketing. When P2P distribution beats them out, they will die. Bands don't need a record company to finance the making of their album (with ever-cheaper home recording equipment). They can distribute music by themselves. So the only value the record company gives the band is marketing (and this doesn't add any value for the listener). So the RIAA realizes that in the long-term, they could be fucked. They might be able to retain the business of folks willing to listen to pap fed to them by marketing reps, but that is about it. (Not that this isn't a sizable source of revenue though....) I hope eventually artists will be able to build online music communities of people willing to support them, and then the RIAA will wither and die.
Deconstruct the State
One lousy CD, it doesn't sound like much of a loss, but I'm surprised that the record sellers didn't come out ahead. They should. P2P should function just like any other marketing channel that allows a free sample. They could even have a few restrictions. Honest people will follow rules they think are reasonable, but if you treat people like thieves, they will steal.
Just think of all the people who download a song or two and then decide they want the whole album, more than they care to download. As long as the record companies don't waste the space by filling the CD up with just one good song and a bunch of trash, I think that kills more album sales than downloading, especially with most of the US market still on dialup.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
Radio stations actually pay licensing royalties when a given song is played. Airplay benefits music producers because of the exposure. In order for music to be desired (and purchased) it needs to be exposed well. P2P downloads are generally songs that the downloader already heard on a radio station. Downloading a song for free cheats the producers out of the sale of the song. Moreover, as the law exists, downloading copyrighted material w/o the copyright holder's permission is unlawful. If you don't like it, change the law. Otherwise illegal downloader face possible penalties, civil and criminal.
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
I stopped downloading mp3s regularly already some time ago (about 2 years) not really because I was afraid of the RIAA/MPAA/whomever_else, but rather because I was tired of downloading Jason Donovan's latest hit under the name Rolling_Stones_Start_Me_Up_Live_In_Birmingham.mp3.
/. after all):
During the 3 year period where I did use Napster (and Kazaa later on) to download mp3s I bought the bulk of my 250+ CD collection, mostly of bands that I had initially heard via P2P. In that sense, it did work a bit like radio.
Not unlike many others, I also burned CDs with those MP3 files, but there's nothing like owning the real thing(TM) so I ended up buying the CDs of bands that I really liked.
This has been said (only today) already about 300.000 times but I'll say it again (this is
When will ??AA realize that CDs don't sell because:
a) sometimes the music does suck
b) we all get the feeling of being ripped off when paying 20 EUR+ for any CD or DVD, especially knowing how much of that goes to the artist
c) trying stuff is something you have to do. Would you by a new pair of trousers without trying them first? Would you buy a car you never drove?
.sig
Quoth the researchers:
Oberholzer-Gee and his colleague, University of North Carolina's Koleman Strumpf, also said that their "most pessimistic" statistical model showed that illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.
Respondeth the RIAA:
Weiss cited a survey conducted by Houston-based Voter Consumer Research that found those who illegally download more music from the Internet buy less from legitimate outlets. Of respondents ages 18-24 who download, 33 percent said they bought less music than in the past year while 21 percent bought more. Of those ages 25-34, the survey found 25 percent bought less and 17 percent bought more, Weiss said.
Earth to Weiss: These people bought fewer CDs in the past year, yes. But your stats show nothing about that being correlated with the fact that they are file sharers. Where is the control group? The stats on CD purchases of non-sharers? I'm sure their CD purchases skyrocketed last year, right? Oh wait:
illegal file sharing would have accounted for only 2 million fewer compact discs sales in 2002, whereas CD sales declined by 139 million units between 2000 and 2002.
Huh. Who'da thunk it?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Now when I buy a CD, it's because it's a really good CD, not because it was marketed really well. I have P2P to thank for that. Besides, P2P is just a scapegoat. If sales are down, it's really because more of that disposable income is being spent on DVD movies.
I'm not one to advocate theft in any form, but I do find it funny that one can legally record and share copies of music from the radio, XM Radio, Television (via, say, cable or sat TV's non-MTV music channels), etc... and many of these sources are digital quality to boot. ...but for some odd reason it is suddenly illegal to do it via the Internet?
This is a flawed comparison. It has always been illegal to share/distribute/give-away-copies-of (whatever you want to call it) copyrighted works without the express permission of the copyright holder. It doesn't matter whether one records from radio, satellite, or from the Internet. One can make a copy for oneself only.
This isn't new or sudden. Look back through the last 30 years of copyright law.
An RIAA spokesperson said that the internet led to a decrease in CD sales.
Well yeah. The internet is also leading to a decrease in TV viewership. It seems likely that time spent surfing is replacing time spent listening to CDs the same way that time spent surfing is replacing TV watching.
I don't think they can prove that downloading decreases CD sales.
What ever happened to EARNING your keep? Who's gonna pay for that company you want to give him? Us? Or are YOU gonna put your money where your mouth is?
The silence is deafening.
If such research as conducted by Strumpf and Oberholzer-Gee is accurate, then let the RIAA outlaw, in every possible manner, P2P file sharing. When the excuse of "them dirty kids are stealing(sic) our stuff" no longer exists, and sales of CDs continue to drop, then the truth should be obvious even top the RIAA. P2P increases sales.
Of course the proposal above presents us with two further, additional questions: How brave are we feeling today? and would the RIAA admit they were incorrect even if they were?
According to US law it is theft thus the NET act of 1997. (No Electronic Theft). Remember to bring a dictionary when you go to court so you can tell the judge that by old latin definitions of the word you didn't "steal" anything and that because the papers are written with improper word usage you think the case should be dismissed.
RIAA has restrictions that you can't distribute the music they produce. The GPL has restrictions that you can't distribute binaries without giving access to the source code. Downloading music withot paying for it is morally equivalent to using the GPL in closed source products.
If you don't agree with the license, don't use it.
Hurt the RIAA by stop using their music.
Now I expect a full apology and retraction for the demonization P2P has gotten from the RIAA, et. al. They should be trying to increase downloads like radio stations try to increase listeners.
If you want to prove something from this, you have to let the market decide. If some labels allow file sharing and the P2P networks actually had mechanisms to enforce copyrights, we would soon see whether file sharing really has a positive or negative effect.
-a
If it's showing HARM, then it's not HELPING the recording industry, ergo the RIAA ought to embrace this study.
1 CD for 5000 files downloaded doesn't sound like much, but when million or even billions of songs are traded, it adds up. If the harm can be quantified, people can be gone after through the courts and made to answer for the quantifiable harm they've caused.
If the study showed that p2p actually helped sales, as has been speculated by some, I'd expect the RIAA to denounce that, but then of course that would also be stupid of them if it turned out that it was actually true.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
well those guys are just poo poo heads who don't understand economics.
err wait.....
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
As Napster became more and more vilified, companies refused to let employees use napster at work. As a result, by the end of 2001, I was no longer able to use it at work (and had dial up at home, so the time it took to screen potential candidates was approaching an hour per song). With the covert and overt poisoning of tracks placed for sharing, it is not worth my effort to sift through the trash in the hopes of finding gems.
Since being unable to hear new music due to the interference of the record industry (and its cronies BayTSP and congress), and the concentration of ownership by conglomerates like Clear Channel, all the radio stations are becoming the same play list. As there is no way for me to discover new music worth listening to, my purchases of albums dropped from 200+ per year in each of 1999 and 2000 to 1 album in 2002 and zero in 2003. I have about 700 CDs, enough CDs that I probably do not need to purchase any more for the rest of my life. Since the record industry is determined to prevent me from discovering new music, it looks like I already have a lifetime worth of music. From 200 albums per year to zero, the RIAA has decided that I do not need to buy any new music ever again.
What could convince me to buy more albums? I would have to find stuff worth listening to. I enjoy classical, techno, jazz, new age, folk and stuff that gets called world. With the exception of 2 spanish language stations, my local radio stations only play country, pop and rap. The spanish language stations have more interesting music than the english language ones. Guess I need to brush up on my spanish.
The current distribution system for music is BROKEN. Existing and proposed legislation just serves to enforce and prop up a distribution system that was (and still is) corrupt and crooked for the last 70 years. I chose to not support the corruption with my money. I chose to not support the crooked politicians who dance to the tune of the RIAA. It is my money and there is no law requiring me to subsidise their corruption, not that it would be a constitutionally valid one even should one exist.
Unfortunately, the RIAA have painted themselves into a corner with the jihad they have declared against P2P. There is no possible way for them to admit their mistake without them losing billions in the RICO lawsuits that would result. Unfortunately for the RIAA, it is them or America, and and currently, the RIAA is winning the propaganda battle while subverting the justice system of the US. It is as corrupt and evil as if AlQeda was in charge of the White House.
I understand how P2P can hurt niche artists. Record stores don't like to stock things that move slowly. In a way, P2P relieves them of that responsibility. It's good for the stores, only the traditional system gets hurt. Let's hope that niche artists have loyal fans that can support them in spite of this problem.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
A work's creator, and only the creator, should have full control of the work's copyright for a strictly limited time, after which the work should enter the public domain. This is all just my opinion, and is an awful lot of shoulding, but there it is.
Also, I haven't seen this suggestion here before, but if you want to try out different artists/genres/whatever, and if you live near a half-decent public library system with half-decent interlibrary loan services, you can check out CDs instead of (at the moment) illegally copying them.
Just my 2 cents worth (for large values of 2).
is there a link to their report?
Somewhat on a tangent to the discussion, but I've seen RIAA reps make mention of a reduction in P2P activity since news of their law suits hit the pop media. Have they released any statistics showing that their sales have gone up to any significant degree of late to back up their assertion that P2P activity has cost them sales? Surely they have to at least release this information soon to their stockholders...
To the first question in my post? Am I right? Or are you actually open minded? I predict a response that will throw another insult instead of answering truthfully.
I purchase more CDs...
used ones...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
gotta love it. Kudos to Harvard for publishing facts that most of us already had an idea were true. Now with Harvard saying, yes it is, it gives more weight to what most of us have been saying.
Of course, what if most of the execs of the RIAA are graduates of Yale or Princeton? (ivy league rivalry).
Anyways, this is something I've been saying for years. Even before file-sharing, I rarely bought any CD's, mainly because of the crappy schtuff out there and because of the lack of funds. It's just that both reasons are even stronger now (thx enron/dotcom bust/etc.).
Economics 101: Correlation Does Not Prove Causation
Just because there was an increase in P2P trading at the same time as there was a decrease in sales does not mean that one affected the other.
There were also an increase of shark attacks during that same time. Most people when they are being attacked by sharks don't buy CDs.
What happens in those asian countries generally fingered as being lax on piracy, and where you can buy pirated CDs for cents on the dollar?
(ok it's not P2P MP3 sharing, but it's just as bad in terms of corporate profit loss)
Do they still have artists? How do they survive?
but it is still wrong to distribute copyrighted material that you have no rights to.
In the case of Copyright, it grants the holder thereof a time limited (though it's an insanely long one, all the same) monopoly on the production and the initial distribution thereof for a given piece of literary or artistic work. To duplicate or distribute duplicates is to infringe upon that government granted monopoly. Hence, the term infringement. If I take, say a DVD, and sell it to you, it's not infringement, per rights of "first sale", meaning that Copyright distribution rights only extend to the first sale of the media that a work is placed upon.
You see, contrary to what all the business people have been saying about "intellectual" property, it's not property per se- it's not a tangible thing. Making copies doesn't take the original item away from the owner. It does lower the amount of money they might see, but it does not directly take money out of their hands, nor does it deprive the holder of the so-called property.
Stealing is the taking of something in a manner that directly deprives someone of the thing taken. There's legal terms for this- theft and larceny come immediately to mind.
Infringement is not stealing in any legal sense of the concept- you can apply less than common dictionary definitions for the term or moral arguments to the mix, but you'd still be wrong because there IS a distinction for the whole thing all the same.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
but the service rendered by a musican?
I think that my point is very valid. You pay the musican to make music. You pay the mechanic to fix a car. You get the car back without paying the mechanic and you have not paid him for the services rendered. You get the song without paying the musician (however little that may be) and you have stolen his services as well. The only difference is that a musician services many people at once whiel a mechanic only services one at a time.
1 CD per 5,000 songs downloaded is a lot. There must be millions, if not billions of songs swapped daily.
2 34274.html
I would hardly call that number and this report a "win" for P2P activists (of which I consider myself).
Instead, I would concentrate on articles like this: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/28/1080412
that show music sales (in Austrailia atleast) are at an all time high.
Be careful what ammo you load your gun with, you never know what can blow up in your face.
We're technologists, right?
We believe in the ultimate triumph of the network, right?
Unregulated P2P doens't affect CD sales -- c'mon, how stupid can this debate get? If the network gets faster, and the P2P reliability better, and the increasing ease of CD-burners, and printers, etc.
And what about pay-for downloads? Is unregulated P2P downloads also not an issue there?
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
Copyright infringement is not piracy!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
The studies referenced to by the RIAA were based on people's sensation about how P2P music sharing has changed their music buying habits, whereas Strumpf and Oberholzer's study was based on purely factual data. I'd be more willing to trust the latter... Ever wondered how precise were those studies on how many sexual partners you had in your life? You get the idea...
No matter what they do to the file sharing people they will be able to do very about people that copy each others CD's.
AFAIK there is no paper trail on a sneakernet.
I'd wager that killing a few morons here and there won't have a dire effect on the world we live in, does this make it right? Copyright infringement is illegal and the one thing none of these studies research is the effect on CD sales should downloading become legal and the mainstream way to distribute music freely. Right now you have people rolling the dice, considering the odds of getting caught, because most know what they are doing is wrong and illegal. If you make it legal to share music on P2P networks freely, physical CDs and the added value of cover art, etc. won't matter at all or very little.
A whopping one CD per 5,000 files downloaded.
I'd say that sounds about accurate, for me at least. i probably buy one CD for every 5,000 files i download.
But I would say that Mp3s and broadband have had an impact on CD sales - maybe not huge, but definitely an impact. I used to buy a CD a week, and it may have gone up a bit with my employement over the past five years, but instead I've bought probably less than a CD a month during that time. Most of my friends have vowed to never buy CDs again. I find it hard to believe that CD sales aren't impacted by this.
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Advertising can manipulate popularity. This kind of thinking is what gave us two decades of formula pop performed by bands constructed on the basis of image and marketing instead of talent. You want more Milli Vanilli?
should be a public resource such as the postal service or the army.
and soon after, we can just have government made music - after which, we will have government made billboards, and then finally, government made Television programs. We'll have newspeak, doublespeak, proles, and the whole bit.
but then again, as i reread your post, maybe you're fishing for trolls.
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
The RIAA has a conclusion they believe is the absolute truth (P2P hurts CD sales) so they mold the "evidence" to support their conclusion. Throw out evidence that doesn't support their conclusion. How un-scientific.
Just like the the fundies!
Did you know that the Smurfs are from Belgium? I thought it funny that some one would call a Smurf distinguised.
This Sig. is False.
You ignored that the study also said for every 150 songs downloaded from a hot album, 1 more CD is sold. Add that to your calculations and tell me how many CDs per month, or year they are losing.
Well if it does hold some merit than it just goes to show that the declining revenues seen by the industry are related more to the product they are putting out rather than loss of CD sales to P2P downloading.
:)
In any case the industry is still looking the wrong way when it comes to revitalizing their business model and as they are so quick to jump to conclusions concerning P2P I hope it bites them in the ass in the long run as I think it will.
I think Chris Farley said it best with "I could take a dump in a box and mark it Blink 182, I have spare time"
. . . or something like that
The bottom line in sales for the RIAA will always go up, because they're hiking prices to compensate. I remember when a CD was $14.99, and that wasn't too long ago. It's possible that the prices are going up to compensate for the piracy, but it's also possible that the prices are going up from greed.
On a side note, no I didn't buy the CD. I'd be happy to give the artists themselves $12 in cash for a copy, but for $18 is ludicrous.
But none of those bands were RIAA whores, and that's what scares the suits at the RIAA. Loss of control. It's been said about guns, but we'll adapt and say it about copyright, too: "copyright control mechanisms are not about copyright; it's all about control."
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
It's more than simply infringement. It is unlawful infringement. Moreover, this unlawful infringement usually involves denying legally due royalties to the copyrighter holder, songwriter, producer, and artists, and their families. No, it's much more than simply "infringement."
--Slashdot: News for Turds. Stuff that Splatters.
Check out the original link from washingtonpost.com; includes links to archival materials, the study etc.
The thing that nobody seems to be talking about is how this affects the QUALITY of the music that is released. I know that the argument can be made about subjectivity and opinions, but the fact of the matter is, as long as the record companies feel threatened - whether or not that pervieved threat is real or imagined - they will be less likely to take chances with artists outside of the proven commercial formulae. This study actually enforces that position, stating that the "niche" artist are the ones whose CD sales drop when compared with downloading activity.
I'm no huge fan of the RIAA, but I love music more than I hate the RIAA, and anything that can be done to increase the quality of the current state of music is a positive thing, IMHO. It was hard enough for musicians to make money before this controversy, thanks to the record companies. Now they are less likely than ever to part with control of the funds generated by the music industry, it seems to me.
Do they still have artists? How do they survive?
I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to answer this stupid question, but YES, they have artists (and some very good ones at that). Just because they're not on American MTV doesn't mean they don't exist. And they survive the same way other artists survive.
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I have been downloading more music in the past few months. I got a car CD player that plays MP3s from CD. Nice.
So am I breaking the law? No, I am not.
Am I downloading music off the internet?
Yes.
Is that illegal?
No.
Before you get your panties in a bunch, clear your mind from all the corporate brainwashing. I download music that the artists WANT me to download. See, it is only illegal if you are downloading copyrighted works without permission to do so. I download music WITH permission from the copyright holder. I have to delete a lot of music because it isn't to my taste, but I get to listen to a lot of good stuff too.
The music is out there, and the RIAA attacking the method of distribution is asanine. DOWNLOADING MUSIC IS NOT ILLEGAL. The RIAA's grip on the music world is slipping. It doesn't own the music industry anymore. The internet is giving the power back to the people. If you don't think this is true, then why is the RIAA all up in arms over downloading? They see the writing on the wall, and are trying to kill it. They may win, but I sure hope not. I am going to do my part, and support independent artists as much as I can. I suggest you do the same. Believe me, there are independent artists out there who are just as good as those popular one.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
So if 5,000 songs equals on CD, which is worth about $18 in a store....
Then those $3,000 out-of-court settlements you hear about between the RIAA and the P2P users equate to about 830,000 songs (something on the order of 3.3 Terabytes of MP3s).
No wonder the RIAA is trying to invalidate this data. Using this data, even a 200GB song collection (50,000 MP3s or so!) would only be 'worth' about $180.
(Plus, that's not even taking into account that the RIAA is getting the full monetary value in these settlements (not just their share of the $18), and they actually sued for a lot more than the $3,000 settlement.)
Punctanym: alternate spelling of words using punctuation or numerals in place of some or all of its letters; see 'leet'
my cd collection has doubled with the advent of filesharing. i download albums to see if i like them, and then delete or buy accordingly. the only time i download something and then do not buy or delete it is if it is unavailable for purchase in the format i want. i have many albums that i would like to buy on vinyl, but i cannot because the stores make it difficult to near impossible to buy vinyl. to quote Duke from fear and loathing, "it's straight economics." when the market can't produce, a black market (read: p2p) emerges.
this is ironic, since the original intent of the RIAA was to create standards for vinyl playback and recording, not be a lobby for the music industry.
until i can buy the albums i want via the internet in a losslessly compressed, open source format w/o DRM or on vinyl at the local stores, the music industry has failed me.
>>Larry Rosin, the president of Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Media Research, said it was absurd to suggest that the Internet and file sharing have not had a profound effect on the music industry.
>>"Anybody who says that the Internet has not affected sales is just not paying attention to what is going on out there," he said. "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?"
So who is to say it hasn't had a positive effect? Notice he leaves what TYPE of effect out.
sig--we don't need no goddamn sig
Kids are listening to their parent's music because today's music sucks. That's why cd sales are down. Dumb fuckers. I listen to Pink Floyd and Eric Clapton and Bob Seger and Led Zeppelin and Queen because they are good. I don't listen to much music made in the last fifteen years because I just don't like most of it.
I vowed never to buy a CD right from the start. In my view its no different from paying 15 for an icon (like in a recent story) And pricing CD's all the same just makes it even more clear to me that im buying a worthless piece of plastic.
Very few 'artists' are worth that price, and what if i want to listen to a slightly crapper one?: Theres so much music out there that is just a copy of something else, or a generic sound that was probably based on a keyboards 'demo' button and some lyrics inspired by the words 'baby' and 'oh yeahhh'. Music like this has the effect of being catchy for 6 days and then getting boring, just think back to the last 6 months of music you've heard and you'll know what i mean. Now am i really expected to pay lots of money so i can listen to this until i get bored, given that the ammount of effort put into it is 2 hours in a studio? (it would have been 1 but the drummer threw up and the producer thought the singing needed more work).
Now i wouldnt mind if i didnt know about a song - what am i missing right? but they are pimped out on all the radio stations, tv, and all the shops, i cant get away from being tempted and addicted to the sound! but im getting tempted and addicted to the same sound every time, its just re-packaged in a different way so ill accept it as new, but in reality, how many times do you hear the _same_ melody in a different form? and once a certain style catches on, how many others copy it to death (Sum 41, Busted etc..) all sounding exactly the same!
The few bands that keep on the ball get good honest fans who will turn up to every concert and buy every album even if they can get it for free, the stupid generic people who have teams of writers to come up with that next catchy melody (well really just re-invent the wheel) they get lots of sheep who buy their music anyway and dont care, either way the industry isnt under threat.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Now this is the kind of news that makes me wake up and feel good in the morning. Only in-experienced users, RIAA, and people have who have money to blow and have never downloaded an will dispute this info but never-the-less. I think it's great that "the people" are standing up to the RIAA power!
Seriously, thye may genuinely not believe the report, in which case, they should simply say that, but they seem to be a lot more aggressive than that with their refusals.
What if the record companies actually considered for a second, that there was a possibility that this report was actually right! Then the only possible result could be to increase their profits! By just dismissing it as rubbish, they're harming themselves more than anyone else.
You consider it theft? Please explain to me what the tangable object is that they no longer have in their possession?
Its *not* theft. Its copyright infringement. Nothing more, nothing less.
Does P2P impact sales? Perhaps.. but no one knows for sure since NO ONE is being honest, in either direction.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As a Slashdot regular, I will gladly accept the results of any study that rationalizes my theft of media content. Conversely, I will rant about the RIAA ad nauseam, since they're Nazis and terrorists for suing people.
When people agree with you they are "distinguished", but when they disagree with you, they are hacks. So, it's not surprising that the Slashdot bunch beam and bubble at the "findings" of these "distinguished" gentlemen, while calling the RAII "hacks". Why? Because the Slashdot crowd does not wish to give up getting music for free while more responsible people go to the store and pay for it as they should.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I have not bought a cd in five years, the RIAA has every reason to hate me. However, I have found a number of new bands through p2p apps. I like the bands, not the distribution associations. Therefore I have a large collection of hats, shirts, posters, and other merchandise, bought directly from the bands websites, where they made more than 5% of my purchase price. Support the artists, not the leeches.
' Larry Rosin, the president of Somerville, N.J.-based Edison Media Research, said it was absurd to suggest that the Internet and file sharing have not had a profound effect on the music industry.
'Anybody who says that the Internet has not affected sales is just not paying attention to what is going on out there," he said. "It's had an effect on everything else in life, why wouldn't it have an effect on this?'
Rosin, like the rest of the weasels clogging the tubes of the traditional music industry, is so out of touch with his own market that he denies the scientific results of this Harvard/UNC study on the basis of his own propensity for abuse. Just like in the movie industry, where the MPAA has finally admitted that most bootlegged movies derive from pirates inside the MPAA community, these weasels are ripoff artists who never pay for their entertainment. So they expect that the rest of us, who actually like the content, and respect the artists, will rip off the content, and destroy their industry. It's now obvious that these weasels are the only part of the entertainment pipeline that threatens the artist/audience relationship. Luckily, they're also the most threatened by the Internet, cutting them out of their abusive role in the chain as their knee-jerk obstructions are replaced by compliant automated distribution systems.
--
make install -not war
Although I don't agree with the concept, the 'difference' really equates to simply WHO is hanging out on the line for you to copy it from.
Example: Pink Floyd song Money, played on the radio this morning. Perfectly ok for me to dupe it to my built-in cassette recorder. Played the video on VH-1 this afternoon, perfectly ok for me to dupe it to my vcr and/or my cassette deck again. Own the original album, perfectly ok for me to dupe it to my cassette deck, again.
Dang, left all those cassettes at home when I went to the party. Jump on Kazaa at the party and grab it from joeuser, WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! RIAA show up at joeuser's door. Nevermind the fact that anyone can legally obtain a copy of just about any popular song from multiple locations without forking over $$$ 'sometime' in a given month, but if you just go 'get-it-right-now' from the 'wrong' source it is magically 'bad'.
(Stolen sig) Remember: it's a "Microsoft virus", not an "email virus", a "Microsoft worm", not a "computer worm
I wouldn't have bought a single MP3 I've downloaded! I rather listen to the radio and don't buy music in store. Movies is something else, but I do buy these after downloading because the features of the CD.
I still don't know why no one brings up the fact that the country was in or going into a recession during the record sales decline. I guess the economic factors don't have anything to do with buying cds.
Gentelmen from U.S. don't judge all markets. For example in Eastern Europe, there are many countries, where prices of CDs are high, but almost every person has access to internet. People don't buy LPs in shops, but they download them from p2p. Average man with average wages (200-250 euros) can purchase one CD per month (about 15 euros) or pay for internet access (about 10-15 euros per month).
It was said, that when one piece of music is often downloaded, the sales increase. I don't find anything special about it. When it's popular, more people buy it, and more people download it.
There is a possibility that somebody downloads mp3, finds it very good and decides to buy it on CD. But on the other hand, somebody who's waiting for an LP (and wants to buy it) downloads mp3 before album is released and finds it not good. Then he doesn't purchase it at all.
p2p decreases music sales, especially in developing countries. It's not only the mp3 thing. Images of almost every CD can be found on the net, as well as CD-RWs in people's houses.
Finally the most importand thing. When music companies set high prices, people steal music from p2p. There is no other way to listen to the music for many people in the world. If p2p was stoped, the sales wouldn't rise. People would steal music in other way. You can call music companies' policy stealing as well, but it's another topic.
There are two solutions. One is decreased prices. It's better to sale 1 mln copies for 5 euros, than 0.2mln for 15. I can tell you that it works, it's not just a theory. In Eastern Europe you can find cheap CDs (1/3 of average price). They always occupate first places on top sells lists. Doesn't matter if they are good or not.
Second solution is internet. Selling throughout the net, for a reasonable price, is the future market, which will wash away the present one. No matter what the music industry thinks, changes are coming.
The average cost of making a CD single is between .17 - .33 cents. That includes the CD and all the packaging, as well as shipping to the stores. CD albums cost a little more ($1.25 - $2.00 each)because there are more tracks to reproduce, and there is usually more involved in the packaging of a CD album. Musicians make anywhere from 5 to 25% (if their lucky, I'm being very generous) on profit from cds sales. For a 20-dollar cd that is about 1 dollar and fifty cents for the artist. say about 3 dollars for a very high quality cd. At an average of 8 dollars tops spent on cd manufacturing and paying the artist. Now were does the rest of the money go? Maybe some goes to the recording of the album, studio time, engineers, songwriters ect. But the bottom line is you're over paying. By at least 50%. Lets say an artists goes platinum (1,000,000 records sold) that's about 1,000,000 * $10 that's about 10 mil + profit for the Corporation plus revenue for merchandising, and even a percentage of tour revenues. The bottom line is that the industry is run by overpaid people. Music doesn't come with advertising costs either. Most of the advertising is done by TV/radio word of mouth, tours and now the internet. Its about time people stopped overpaying for cd's. If you really care about the artists then go to a concert that's where they make the real money. My numbers may be a bit off but you get the general idea. Artists make money off tours not cd sales. p2p only hurts the corp, unless I'm mistaken. Then again how do some independent record labels offer cds at the much more reasonable price of 10 or 7 dollars?
When I went to Janis Ian's web site (there are probably others out there with similar information) and read about the music industry's business practices the realization came to me that they are basically pimps.
Pimps don't like it when a bunch of independents come muscling in on their racket. Bad for business, pretty soon people will be giving it away for free.
And people/musicians are just now realizing that they have been brainwashed into thinking the ONLY way to make it in music is via a nice fat record deal. Now new acts do not need the record industry. Just let folks download your music and then they can see you live at your favorite venues. This is a HUGE shift in power. So while the record companys' stables are full of stale, used up and aging acts, all the young new talent is ending up freelancing. IMO, of course.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Ok, I couldn't find any good recent stats about the number of downloads per day from p2p but I did find a stat from Morpheus in 2001 which said users were downloading 20,000,000 files per day. I know they're not all music files, and I recognize that this is not at all a modern figure. I assume that the increases in the number of people with broadband over the last three years will compensate for the number of users not downloading music.
So I use 20,000,000/day as my base. Divide that by 5000 (since we're costing them one cd for every 5000 downloads) that leaves us with 4000 lost CD sales per day. Multiply this by $20 per cd and that gives us $80,000 lost per day. Mulitply this by 365 and you've got $28,000,000 per year in lost sales due to file downloading. Now, I admit this isn't that big for a record company, but it's silly for us to assume that 1 cd for every 5000 downloads is nothing. It's something. It's millions of dollars.
--
RumorsDaily
Stealing is paying a bunch of congressmen to pass a law that gives away what EVERYONE OWNS IN COMMON.
Disney et. al., and the congressmen are conspirators to steal the cultural wealth of the nation and sell it back to us in dribs and drabs.
Ideas and broadcast data belong to the peoples to absorb each in their own manner and laws saying otherwise are as null and void as a law telling me to pay someone for the air I breathe.
I know who the thief is. It is the rich who are picking MY pocket !!!!!
In today's society the majority of people are conditioned by the leftist elite to assume no responsibility for their actions, so why should the music industry be different?
It couldn't be that the majority of music is cookie cutter schlock spewed out by a machine used to manufacturing "the next big thing" out of thin air since the 50's, talent and content be d@mned. NO!!! It's Napster...yeah that's the ticket..
It couldn't be that the price point set on the object is unrealistically high, especially considering the division of profits. The record companies NEED 40% + of the cost to defray the cost of forcing the next no talent bimbo down our throats. Not a chance...It's Grokster...they are doing this to us, actually eroding the fiber of what makes America great and single handedly bringing around the demise of capitalism!
No way it could be that WE'RE IN A FREAKING RECESSION!!! NO!!! We commissioned a study by the most expensive ad agency in the country and they say it's most assuredly all Kazaa's fault.
It's not possible that the RIAA and it's lapdog media machine are misrepresenting the facts...like that the sale of SINGLES is down while the rest of the industry held or increased, or that this study and others show that music sharing helps over all and especially the independant artist/producer. The RIAA's position?....We are working tirelessly to buy enough politicians to insure that eventually filesharing will become a capital crime. and it's communist... and definately pagan...and probably satanic...
The problem is that filesharing allows the consumer to intelligently compare and contrast different products. This means that a consumer will make up his or her own mind about quality based on a sampling of all that is offered, and vote with their dollars accordingly. This runs counter to the big corporation view that they know quality more so than the unwashed masses.
When is the music industry going to realize (or admit) that it is not file swapping that is hurting the music industry, it's the Internet itself, as a straight media competitor that is hurting music sales. Listeners are spending less time in front of their stereos and more time in front of their computers. Wake up RIAA! You can fight file swapping all you want, you're still going to lose customers.
manages to forget the fact that the GPL is called "copyleft" for a reason; the purpose of the GPL is to use copyright against copyright; to turn what we expect to be copyright violation into expected use, and to turn standard practice into copyright violation. People don't really cry "copyright violation" when they see someone using code inappropriately, they say "GPL violation."
but what about when 90% of the population has a portable mp3 player device?
When mp3 gets to be truly mainstream (it is getting there), I think that we will see more negative consequences of free file sharing.
As it is now, mp3 is still too inconvenient.
As grandparent already pointed out, advertisers care that you are aware of their *product* and buy their *product*, not their advertising. Being aware of their advertising might actually be counterproductive.
It's rare that you're presented with a knob whose only two positions are Make History and Flee Your Glorious Destiny.
That might be true. Cause people are more likely to d/l crap just to try it even though they would never buy it. And d/l old stuff you like but not so much that you'd invest 10 buck on a CD. But I think RIAA should just point to the billions of downloads. Yeah, maybe only 1 in 5K - but when your talking billions then that's actually a lot :-)
I am not a music download data researcher, but I'll play one on /.
Really, why should it take a research team from an esteemed college or institution to figure out the obvious?
Games sales, console and computer, have increased dramatically in the period of time that CD sales have decreased.
One need not be a genius to figure out that games cost money. The demographic that makes up the largest percentage of CD sales is the same demographic that makes up the largest percentage of CD sales.
If I spend more money on games, I have less money to spend on CDs.
Entertainment priorities are changing, more people are spending more of their discretionary incomes on gaming rather than music.
Yes, it's that simple.
I have long held the opinion that the reason RIAA execs are so hot around the collar about P2P is that they need a scape goat to cover their collective asses. What kind of a businessman continues to increase the price of his product in the middle of an economic recession? A moronic one. When people are more concerned about their jobs, they are less likely to spend money. Basically, they passed the threshold of diminishing returns, but rather than admit they made a mistake, they decided to blame P2P. P2P may have had some of an impact on record sales, but I belive the rising cost of CD's had much more of an impact.
IANAL... But I play one on
The other 4990 files were all horse pr0n. Damn Kazaa!
So "x %" bought fewer CDs, and "y %" bought more (where x>y)? Great, but unless we know how many CDs x and y bought, this is a completely meaningless observation. If x only ever bought 2 anyway, and y bought 3,000, then this is a spurious argument. Me, I probably bought 20 in my whole life, so the fact that I don't buy so many any more is hardly of note. Dammit, I have 100s of LPs, and I'm buggered if I'm going to re-buy them on CD; after all, all I own is the license to listen to the music, so I should be able to transfer that to another media for no more than the cost of a blank CD. The fact that they won't do this forces me to download MP3s, and they're shooting themselves in the foot. Why don't the RIAA/BPI/whoever face facts: most "bands" they promote these days bite the bag, CDs are stupidly overpriced -- it's not like the whole 10-15 goes to the person who actually created the music -- and no matter how many people you sue we're still going to use KaZaA, eDonkey, or whatever. Stop suing your customers, and sort your damned lives out!
This sentence no verb.
Did they consider in the people who will never buy music that is put out by the RIAA, or the people who are not willing to pay high prices for the CD's?
It's not so much as people want things for free, or that people try before they buy, people are just fed up with what they have been put through the last few years, and have found other sources for their entertainment.
TruePunk | Games
There is one great way to get the music you want, pay less, still have all the packaging and liner notes, and not give any money to the RIAA. They're called used CD shops. Just around the corner, I can buy 4 CD's for $20. Sure it's not the newest, most popular music, but I still find stuff that interests me. If I get an early release of a still popular band, I may be inclined to go to HMV to buy their new album. It's true that used CD's don't give money back to the artist, but they still contribute to their overall exposure. Wait, isn't this like P2P? Only difference is the government still makes taxes of the used CD sale.
Those of you who say you have stopped buying CD's because that supports the RIAA are missing the point. Keep buying CD's, just buy them used. Once you're bored of them, or if they ended up being albums you couldn't stand, sell them back to another used store. The artists still get exposure, which will increase ticket sales, more people at concerts mean more T-Shirt sales, and since this is how artists make money today anyhow, it's a win win situation. And the RIAA never sees a cent.
I'm never going to stop buying CD's. There are just too many good ones, and having a burnt copy, or a digital playlist just doesn't compare to cover-art, liner notes, and the satisfaction of adding to your collection.
The title a law was passed uder has no legal standing. They could call a law outlawing spitting across state lines the "Artificial Insemination Control Act" and that wouldn't make spitting == artificial insemination any more than the title "No Electronic Theft" makes copyright infringement a property crime. Arguing based on titles of bills is as dumb as arguing based on movies about political campaigns: neither has any requirement to be based in reality. You got modded "flamebait" because you made a snide retort based on an inane premise.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
I think you need to tweak your viewpoint a little. The RIAA folks don't directly care if record sales are up, only insofar as it helps to raise their (middlemen) profits. So, if filesharing helps music sales but ends up removing the need for the RIAA from the music equation, they'd rightfully see this as a threat -- to themselves and their cushy profits.
Hopefully the music industry will evolve into something that has lower prices for consumers, more profits for artists, and no RIAA, but you can't expect the RIAA folks to not fight that tooth and nail (while loudly proclaiming that they're fighting to protect the artists -- yeah right).
I think what the RIAA is really scared of is the fact that P2P distribution might allow an artist to gain fame and make money without going through the "major label system"
I notice that most other replies strongly agree with this assertion. But, given that P2P has been widely deployed for nearly five years, what artists have gained fortune and made money without going through the "major label system"? I can't believe the RIAA is so effective as to prevent even a single band slip through the cracks. Bands need the RIAA publishers to ram their music down our throats, both good and bad. There are a lot of good bands you would never have heard if it weren't for the big publishers. There are even more good bands you will never hear, becuase they don't have the support of a publisher willing to stick their neck out. Will P2P give those bands the exposure they need to make it big? I really don't think so; people will ignore them because they've never heard of them.
There have always been smaller publishers (Sub Pop, 4AD, etc. I'm not sure of their RIAA status) that have made some niche acts do very well.
I don't download music, and I only buy a couple of CDs a year; most of what I listen to comes from college and small-market radio, where the DJs are there to find and play new and interesting stuff, as opposed to the Clear Channel mega stations, where DJs are hired for their inter-song comedy routine.
I love buyings CDs regardless if I have the songs in MP3 format or not. Even if download full albums. The quality of the CD is superior to an MP3, plus I like having something tangible.
If this study is correct, they would make more by charging one cent more per CD than they are actually losing because of file downloading.
Not to say that such a tarrif would make it legal to exchange copyrighted music files, it wouldn't... only that it would at least sate their "we're losing money" attitude... Then we can get back to punishing offenders if and or when they are discovered instead of trying to buy politicians into creating yet more laws to govern and control areas where the laws we had before were fine in an inevitably vain effort to control the entire population.
[what?]
"It seems a little silly now, but [the United States] was founded as a protest against taxation."
Actually, the US wasn't founded as a protest against taxation. But either way, the "protest against taxation" was a protest against taxation WITHOUT REPRESENTATION. Americans elect their leaders and can bribe them, given enough money.
What's hurting CD sales?
How about the insane $20 price tag?
I just bought a DVD which cost $100 million to produce for $18. Now how much is that CD which cost $30k to produce? What's that? It was produced on a home studio with $3k worth of equipment?
Well relative to the $100M production cost of the DVD, the CD should be selling at $.0006
Nuff said.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
Now people buy the CDs = RIAA profit
People who are sued by RIAA = RIAA profit
People download mp3s and RIAA complain = RIAA Free marketing
People download half an mp3 = RIAA Free sample to the public
People who read about RIAA = RIAA Free marketing
Consumers just can't win. I don't think TV stations have nearly the edge RIAA does.
If you ask me, this story is just a touch ideological. The data gathered in the study is interesting, but could easily be used to support arguments either for or against the RIAA's position. After all, haven't we all been screaming that file sharing INCREASES music consmption? Even if it's only 1 CD per 5000 downloads, any study that says that file sharing DECREASES music sales is hardly supportive of that position. I'm as offended by the RIAA's motives and tactics as anyone, but using bad logic to counter their views is just not an effective way of fighting them off.
Pete Forsyth
Quoth the article:
This is the exact opposite trend to what I'd expect. I think we all agree that filesharing has both a positive effect, due to advertising/finding new bands, and a negative effect, due to people downloading a song and not buying the album when they otherwise would have. So filesharing should increase CD sales when the former effect outweights the second, and decrease them when the latter effect is more important.
The advertising effect of filesharing should be much stronger for unknown bands than for known bands. Everyone's heard the mainstream hits; not many people have heard Random Unknown Cool Band. I see no reason why people's desire to buy a CD when they already have an MP3 should depend on how big the artist is. So small bands should do better under filesharing than big bands, whether or not the net effect integrated over all CD sales is positive, negative, or neutral.
But... this study says that the situation is exactly opposite. Which suggests that people's desire to buy a CD from a mainstream band once they have the MP3 is greater than their desire to do so from a small band... or that P2P is only increasing the status quo, in sharp contrast to "conventional" wisdom and really fucking depressing if true.
[TMB]
So basically all this is helping the majors. I can't count the number of times when I've played a record for a friend and they've asked me, can you burn me a copy of that? I say no. They scowl and accuse me of being a zealot. Then I point out that I'm friends with the band and another friend owns the label, and I don't rip off my friends. While people claim to only be after the RIAA labels, very few people know who they're ripping off - never mind what the record contract actually says (a typical indie deal is a 50/50 split after expenses).
Remember that statistics can be twisted however one wants.
As long as it benefits the Slashdot crowd, we all eat them up and say "Yeah! Exactly!"
The second some statistics come out to the contrary, I've always seen the arguments here go "Well, those are just statistics, they skewed them to their advantage..."
Just an observation. Flame away. Thought about posting Anonymously, but I've got some karma, and I think it's a justifiable point.
Can you ping me now? Gooood! | Manhappenin.Net - Things to do
(draft of) the original paper is here:
r ch 2004.pdf
http://www.unc.edu/~cigar/papers/FileSharing_Ma
They used server logs of two OpenNap servers from fall 2002, plus a lot of other input data (including for example the number of German kids on school holiday at a given point in time, because 'one out of every six U.S. downloads is from Germany'.).
Lots of other interesting tidbits, even if you can't make it through the formulae.
I am not an econometrist (just a mathematician), but this looks like a very serious piece of work to me. And they (like BigChampagne) rely on actual download numbers, not just on phone surveys (like the Edison Media Research guys the RIAA is quoting in the Yahoo article).
I agree that most new music is crap but perhaps the reason people are buying fewer CDs is due to cost?
I can think of several albums that I wouldn't mind getting but I'm to cheap to spend the $13-$16. The online services that offer an album for around $10 are only slightly more reasonable and the DRM handicap doesn't make them worth while. Instead of buying the music or downloading it I simply go without. Other things are more important then CDs (mortgage, food,...)
If the price of the album was closer to reality (say in the $4-$5 range) I would defiantly purchase more. Personally I think the decline in CD sales has more to do with CD-R media costs then P2P. When you can buy a 100 pack of CD-Rs for almost the same price as 2 CDs it makes you start to wonder what planet the RIAAs member companies are on since they can't seem to find the same deals. Granted there is some setup cost to creating CDs but you can't tell me they haven't found a way to lower it since CDs where invented. To me it's simple price gouging.
The RIAA needs to pull its head out of its ass and realize that we don't buy their claim that P2P is causing a decline in CD sales. Apparently all the years of raping us has made them believe that we are all morons and will believe anything their hype machine spews out. Who will they blame next? Unicorns and the Easter bunny?
We've tried nothin' and we're all out of ideas. - Ned's Mom
How is it at all possible to find a control group for a study like this??
Without a reliable control group, this study is just as worthless as any RIAA study.
Smoking is a cause of cancer.
The grass is greener on the other side.
And the little piggy DID actually go 'Wee wee wee' all the way home.
I doubt this is true, and I'm tired of pirates trying to have it both ways. I revel in my piracy, and willingly admit that my 7000+ mp3s have probably stopped me from buying on the order of 100 cds, or whatever portion of that I could afford. You have on one hand a part of the pirate community which is proud to be damaging the RIAA, and on the other hand a part which insists that no damage is being done. Which one do you want as the face of filesharing? Can we please have more studies like "Piracy tearing the record industry limb from limb"?
Check out the top news story...
http://infopimps.org/news.php
Man, you really are a piece of work, aren't you. Why don't you read the act yourself. Take note of 17USC506 wherein you will find a list of Criminal Offenses as defined by this act. Note that nothing therein defines any sort of "theft". "Criminal infringement", yes, but not "theft". Theft has a specific legal definition-- essentially, depriving another of property-- and copyright infringement ain't theft.
THIEF!!!
Dumbass.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Pirating any copyrighted material creates a userbase that allows the product to remain alive and increase it's popularity(if it's a good product) If kids wern't able to get a pirated copy of Photoshop they won't go and buy it, they just don't have that kind of money. However they get it for free and this creates a huge userbase for the product, free marketing for adobe. The product becomes so popular that sales actually increase. There's is no doubt that the userbase of piraters may eventually convert to the userbase of purchasers of the product.
The RIAA's argument is that if they force people not to download MP3s then they are forced to go buy the album, which is more affordable for most people on their budget. I guess that seems pretty fair for the artist that is trying to sell the album. I think that peer2peer sharing would directly decrease cd sales if popularity and userbases would not increase for the artist. However this is not the case. Artists userbases are strengthened and a more widespread popularity for people to buy the album is created.
This is the pertinant part.
Can you reed, do you speek teh english?
THEIF!!!
18 U.S.C. 2319A
2319A. Unauthorized theft of and trafficking in sound recordings and music videos of live musical performances
(a) Offense.--Whoever, without the consent of the performer or performers involved, knowingly and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain--
fixes the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance in a copy or phonorecord, or reproduces copies or phonorecords of such a performance from an unauthorized fixation;
transmits or otherwise communicates to the public the sounds or sounds and images of a live musical performance; or
Are you nuts? Listen, I hate the RIAA, passionately, but you CAN NOT say, oh, yeah, we're stealing, but it's really, really small stealing.
I mean, is this the result of a post-literate society, that this post and the posts below it offer this as an argument to the RIAA? You can't legally justify theft by saying that what you STOLE was small so they shouldn't even care.
It doesn't matter what the RIAA claims in that case. If theft has occurred, then all you're arguing is damages, not the CRIME. THAT is the problem here.
If you're going to argue against the RIAA then you need to establish that what you're DOING, by downloading music, is fundamentally all right, not that even though it's theft, well, they're just big whiners because you're not really stealing a lot.
My God. No wonder the RIAA is successfully filing lawsuits.
Chr0m0Dr0m!C
Not quite... French for Smurf is "Schtroumpf". Sorry to ruin it.
Maybe we deserve this world ?
1) When you have a guy fix a car, he rarely just puts in "labor". But lets push that aside. Labor is a commodity the same as an engine or bolt. It can be quantified, there are limits to how much time a person has. Compare to copying a computer file which doesn't not take away the amount that can be copied or sold.
2) Electricity must be generated by expending energy. Its not like the guys at the electric company can wave a wand and say "generate!". They have to make the electricity. If you use electricity, there is less for others to use.
This isn't about physical versus non-physical; that's your way of spinning an argument that you can't logically refute and that is:
"When a song is copied, nothing is taken."
Contrast that with fixing a car or generating electricity; even someone as stubborn as you must see the difference.
Finally, the whole concept of "ownership" is fuzzy when you're talking simply about a unique pattern of bits. How do you "own" a pattern of bits. We all have to get together and play pretend. If you don't buy into the fiction that there is "ownership of ideas", the truth of the whole debate becomes painfully clear.
Open your mind, and stop jerking your knee.
Aaaaahhhhhhh!
RIAA are already trying to discredit the study
Please god, tell me is it the editors doing this?
Is it some "boxen" that has become sentient, and likes the plural form?
Why is it cool?
It.is.driving.me.crazy...
" but the service rendered by a musican?"
In the case of live music, that's okay, but the musician isn't rendering you anything; he is giving you a pattern of bits. It doesn't cost the musician time or energy for me to pop a CD into my drive.
Compare that to a mechanic who has 8 hours a day to sell. The musician is limited by the amount of plastic that mankind can produce.
So at most, the file downloader is depriving the musician and songer and the RECORD COMPANY some potential revenue.
Potential Revenue? That means jack-sh*t. There is revenue and there is non-revenue.
They don't even factor in all the revenue the RIAA companies get from the tax on hardware and media. I bet that covers the 1 cd per 5000 download cost this study says they're losing.
Its really very simple. P2P allows us to sample the entire album before we buy it, and what we're finding is a lot of albums are crap on the whole, but some singles are ok. Those albums that are entirely good are still being snapped up, in some cases even more so due to filesharing, as the article points out.
"You did steal music"
You can't steal music; you can simply copy music without the artists permission. It is a copyright violation.
A Copyright is not a certificate of ownership, it is a right to distribute.
That's the whole argument. Its more than pedantic, it cuts right to the heart of what music is and what it represents.
Now I expect a full apology and retraction for the demonization P2P has gotten from the RIAA, et. al.
After all, this automatically proves everything.
They should be trying to increase downloads like radio stations try to increase listeners.
Yes, because after all, all those millions of Kazaa downloaders are merely "sampling" all those albums. They should be INCREASING piracy, which will magically increase sales!
Record labels should distribute approved MP3 tracks, then offer them as singles on CD, just like the radio stations.
You mean like THEY DO ON ITUNES AND OTHER ONLINE MUSIC STORES?
They should closely scrutinize the downloading habits, then create an album based on the popularity of certain tracks.
How stupid. The users can just download what they want from iTunes and burn their own mix CDs.
They don't see this as a tool, only as a threat. They're idiots.
No, it is a threat. This is the bizarre logic of the Slashdotter. Somehow, there is no connection when millions of people grab something for free and don't pay for it in the stores. Somehow, they think there's not going to be a drop in sales as a result. Somehow, they think sales are magically going to occur when people are sticking everything online to download.
But, yeah, CmdrTaco and the rest of Slashdot tells me they're idiots, and the RIAA is evil! The true distraction of the issue. After all, the RIAA is wrong for legally pursuing people illegally distributing their copyrighted product! Even though this is EXACTLY what Slashdot was saying they should do when they were suing Napster!
TV Production should do this too. If Viacom released official BitTorrents of Enterprise, complete with banner ads at the bottom of the screen, I'd download them. The banner ads would make me more likely to delete it when I'm done watching it, which is what they'd want, right.
Yes, because posters on Slashdot should be dictating to everyone how they distribute their property.
Then they can still sell me the DVD.
People will just rip the DVD and put it online and download that. Seriously, you think millions of eMule/Kazaa users are going to "sample" the DVD and then go out and buy it when they've just downloaded the DivX?
That'll probably never happen, though.
That's because it's ridiculous. Thanks for playing.
Slashdotters have yet to legally or morally justify pirating an artist's music. An artist who willingly signed their contract, who willingly went into the studio, who spent months recording and mixing and performing and having cover art done in order to have a CD in the stores--only for college kids to pirate the fuck out of it.
Minority Slashdotters, i.e., those who think their niche opinions magically represent the majority, are honestly going to go around and justify it as "sampling" and better yet, "free advertising," even though you don't have the right to decide for anybody how they distribute their works. You don't have the right to just obtain their product without paying for it simply because it's there. And your opinion that it's "sampling" is completely hilarious, and everybody but Slashdot laughs at it because those millions of p2p users are not "sampling" everything. I could list about 20 websites that collect e2dk links. The biggest, Sharereactor.com, was recently shut down by Swiss authorities. People like you, as usual, are bitching about it because it got rid of your convenient piracy portal.
All this stems from an attempt to remove the aura of criminality that permeates what you do. Sorry, you can't remove the guilt, because you are...guilty. The RIAA is not the bad guy here for--*GASP*--protecting their intellectual property by suing individual downloaders, just like Slashdotters said they should two years ago.
Then the industry will cry fowl...
Let's leave the ducks out of this, shall we?
A number of the posters here on Slashdot.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
THEIF!!!
18 U.S.C. 2319A
2319A. Unauthorized theft of and trafficking in sound recordings and music videos of live musical performances
Shut up, troll, the section reads:
If all you have to offer is USC text editted by you to include the word "theft", this argument is over. You loser...If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It re-ignites/increses an interest in music overall more than any other one thing.
If you can't understand why that's a good thing, then I probably can't explain it to you any better.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
one thing that *anyone* who knows *anything* about tv advertising is the fact that men have a much higher tendancy to skip around channels during commercial breaks. TIVO & co. even considered using channel surfing habits to help profile individual viewers (what do you think your cable company does?) But they weren't going to stop there, what they were really interested in, was using that profile to choose commercials that you would be interested in watching.
I do agree with you 100% that repetition is very important to push impulse buying & to build brand awareness/recognition. But I'd say that subliminal messages are much more effective. Blipverts anyone?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I win.
/.
I always win.
Just accept it.
I will continue to win.
Just because you feel the need to edit the NET act to suite you is no reason to get aggressive towards me.
You were wrong. It is not a crime and is understandable with all the disinformaiton that is spread on
Now you know the truth and can fight for the spread of truth regardless of your own opionion on the subject.
I know this article was posted just to placate the RIAA-hating psychos who think everything should be online for "sampling" purposes.
...meanwhile, let's post another article about a GPL violation!
Just a question--why do you think it's okay to violate everybody's copyrights and dictate to others how they should distribute their own intellectual property, and then post an article berating some company for "violating the GPL?"
Why do you latch onto copyright in one instance and reject in the other when it means getting free stuff? Let's be honest here--those millions of Kazaa and eMule users are NOT there to "sample" albums in order to run down to the store and buy them. Hell, people are starting to package entire band discographies into big multi-GB RAR files for easy download. Are you telling me all those downloaders are going to run to the store when they like what they hear? Most of these are being put out in high-quality MP3 and MPC.
As usual, the issue of the artists in this mess will be completely ignored, and instead they will be replaced with the "evil" RIAA who has dared use legal means to pursue people illegally distributing their copyrighted works. That's baaaaad...even though it's exactly what Slashdot was saying they should do when Napster was under attack.
It just reveals that it all boils down to people wanting free stuff, getting used to the convenience, and then getting mad when it's threatened to be taken away. You've built entire mindsets around it, that you're "sampling," that it's "free advertising"...none of which has any basis, none of which matters legally or morally. Just because your niche opinion equates illegal piracy to sampling doesn't mean the rest of those terabytes going across p2p every month is all for sampling purposes. Get real!
What's interesting is that nobody mentions movies or games. Look how the PC games industry is dying. They're either going to console or putting out the same top-seller sequels every year that they know will make them money. Why do you think that is? Are you going to call it "sampling" when Doom 3 gets put out online a week before it hits retail, as they all are now? Is it "free advertising" when full DVD-R rips of the retail DVD of Lord of the Rings: Return of the King are on eMule at the very moment I type this?
Oh, yeah, I forgot, the MPAA and the RIAA are "goons" because they don't like when people illegally distribute their copyrighted works. I forgot that Slashdot has the right to tell people how to advertise, sample, and distribute...
"I think what the RIAA is really scared of is the fact that P2P distribution might allow an artist to gain fame and make money without going through the "major label system""
Being a musician (blues guitarist here) myself, I can see the logic to this argument. I've known a couple of bands/artists that had high hopes when they got "signed", only to have their work "deep-sixed" because the label saw their work as possibly taking away from one or more of their "cash-cow", heavily-promoted and marketed artists. I think the real way out here is independent online marketing and sales by the artists themselves, marketing through P2P, and sales through an online service like Taxi or mp3.com. After several decades (I'm 46) of watching the labels screw artists, they couldn't pay me enough to sign with them. Granted, I might not ever get a grammy or a gold/platinum record, but at least I'll have more control of what gets released and when, and a larger chunk of whatever money is made. Plus, it might get a few more butts filling seats at gigs, which is what I live for anyway (there just isn't _anything_ like the feeling of connecting with a live audience, and riding that energy!).
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
> Those two economists at Harvard and UNC-Chapel
> Hill have done the research and the math on how
> much CD sales are actually hurt by P2P sharing.
> The answer: A whopping one CD per 5,000 files
> downloaded...
News flash... Researchers have determined that
robbing banks does not seriously impact the
flow of cash or effect the economy in any type
of serious manner.
The GPL is called copyleft for a reason: its designed to fly in the face of normal copyright.
Typical copyrights take away rights from the public. The GPL is designed to preserve the rights of the public.
So while the two actions are *legally* equivalent, they are morally opposite.
If p2p only hurts CD sales by one in 5000 downloads, surely all the money they've recieved from settlements *more* than covers any lost revenue! The RIAA are therefore making money out of p2p.
I think I'll disregard further studies, because a crucial piece of information is missing. Stop me if I'm wrong here, but the only way to actually show that CD sales were hurt is by showing that a poorly-selling CD's tracks happened to be very popular on P2P networks. That would also eliminate the "shoddy quality" argument. Last I checked, popularity has more to do with commercial "brainwashing" than with artistic achievement.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
I always win.
Just accept it.
I will continue to win.
Just because you feel the need to edit the NET act to suite you is no reason to get aggressive towards me.
You were wrong. It is not a crime and is understandable with all the disinformaiton that is spread on /.
Now you know the truth and can fight for the spread of truth regardless of your own opionion on the subject.
What-ever...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
It's not right, but we all need to understand that, for the most part, the RIAA isn't (shouldn't be) being hurt legally. When some one receives music in any form other than what is being sold, the commercial distributors are economically hurt. Too bad. In the unlikely event that an artist places an MP3 on his/her web site, that hurt the distributors. They are being bypassed. That's economics. Places where someone could legitimately take exception to this are (1) in the case of the artists who aren't getting their cut, and (2) in the cases where the recording studio was paid for by the label.
Disclaimer: I don't use Kazaa, I believe it to be illegal.
Counter Disclaimer: I believe the RIAA to be a nasty set of incumbent corporations legally preventing that which should be an inevitable result of the digital age.
Any other thoughts by someone who better knows the recording industry or copyright law?
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
I think it's fair to say that this was never about loss of sales... it would have been remarkably easy for the recording industry to discover the real impact of downloading on their industry, and tweak it as a marketing tool to increase business and improve relations with it's customers.
Clearly that is not the case.
If we follow the smoke back to the likliest fire, we find men, who are alpha dominant types, used to controlling and having their way, confronted by change, decentralization, a loss of control, and shrinking sales. The obvious nknee jerk response is to get complete control. Get draconian. Make sure that nobody anywhere, hears a sound, unless somebody somewhere is paying them for it. It's the natural place powerful men tend to go, when confronted with loosing power and control. Men in charge detest the idea on not having dominion.
The problem is, they never did... it's all a personal illusion. The cure is worse than the disease. The damage done to the local populace is usually devastating, and in the end, the big guy fall hated and reviled as a despot.
Knowing it's not the common way alpha types rule, we need to start teaching our children about dancing with the chaos... embracing change, and using it to succeed. Our natural inclination to resist the flow of nature, when it suits us, tends to provide the lesson, time and again, that nature is bigger and will just run flat over you.
Considering how unpleasant it is to learn this lesson, one would think we'd have to learn it less often?
Genda "May you live in interesting times...
May you receive everything you ask for...
May you come to the attention of your superiors..."
-- An ancient Chinese curse
That's what you get for feeding the trolls :D
P.S.
The next time someone argues infringment is theft, just throw Supreme Court rulings at them. Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) is an excellent example:
"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property"
"the copyright holder owns only a bundle of intangible rights which can be infringed, but not stolen or converted"
"It follows that interference with copyright does not easily equate with theft, conversion or fraud. The Copyright Act even employs a separate term of art to define one who misappropriates a copyright: 'Anyone who violates any of the exclusive rights of the copyright owner,' that is, anyone who trespasses into his exclusive domain by using or authorizing the use of the copyrighted work in one of the five ways set forth in the statute, 'is an infringer of the copyright.'"
There's also Wheaton v. Peters, 34 U.S. 591 (1834) that established that there is no inherent right to copyright, that it is something purely created and granted by congress - Congress . . . by this [copyright] act, instead of sanctioning an existing right, as contended for, created it. Copyright is a limited monopoly granted to authors, and that limited monopoly is granted for a purpose. There are countless cases such as Feist Publications, Inc. v. Rural Telephone Service Co., 499 U.S. 340 (1991) that say objective of copyright is not to reward the labor of authors and Fogerty v. Fantasy, Inc., 510 U.S. 517 (1994) that says that copyright does not exist for the authors benefit but for the public's benefit, and that copyright must ultimately serve the public good. Any arguments based on the interests of copyright holders are invalid, except to the extent they are actually in service of the public benefit.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
... singles were used to create a playlist of favorites when you were listening. Your record player had a stack option where you slipped this plastic thing over the metal spindle, to make up for the records spindle hole size discrpency. Then you stacked your 45s in the order you wanted to hear them in. You could (can still) stack albums, but as far as I know, there weren't any technological ways to jump to different tracks on the disk(s) on demand, so singles-on-the-stack was it for customization. Singles were also much cheaper, and yep, often the flip side of the "hit" really, really sucked. That was a crapshoot. I also remember saving my nickles to get a reel to reel ( a cheap one), so I could make dupes of my singles, in the order I wanted, thenput them away so they wouldn't get scratched. I would have shared them with friends and let them make copies, but dang I can't remember any others in my crowd who had a reel to reel.
Just a question-- why do you think that Slashdot is some sort of hivemind with a single thought process?
I'm referring to the majority mindset--the one reflected by the number of +4/+5 mods and the headlines that the editors post. You seriously disagree that it isn't the majority mindset?
Slashdot is a large number of people (several hundred thousand if user ID numbers are to be believed). These people cross the spectrum. Some are against any copyright at all. Some think copyright is a perfect and should be expanded in power. Some hold more moderate positions. Some even hold more nuianced positions that appear contradictory on the surface. This diverse population posts the comments you read and submit the articles that the editor's post. End result: a huge pile of amazingly inconsistent content with little to no pattern to the belief system. All nice and clear?
So disregard my opinion if it doesn't apply to you--nice and clear?
Of course, I suspect you're just looking for an opportunity to troll.
I don't doubt you'd "suspect" that. The fact that my post went from +5 to +1 in 10 minutes doesn't surprise me--clearly I ticked off the majority mindset who disagreed with me, and instead of replying as you did, modded me down. Which is, of course, fascism.
The situation isn't new, and it's been explained. Repeatedly. Furthermore, the post you replied to doesn't make any claims about the GPL or copyright!
It was an example of the double-standard that Slashdot holds due to its views on the RIAA. Slashdot editors will post pro-piracy articles and claim they increase sales, thereby supporting copyright infringement. In the next breath, they will post an article criticizing some inane violation of the GPL. How can one expect people to follow one copyright scheme if they profess not following another? It was merely a thought-provoking opinion. Believe it or not, conversations sometimes go on tangents.
With enough reports such as this, I wonder if it might be possible one day for all those who have previously settled with the RIAA and similar to launch a class action of sorts back at them...
Now *that* is something that would likely terrify the RIAA, if each time they settled, they created a potential lawsuit down the track, regardless of how little chance it had of succeeding.
Needless to say, IANAL.
Enjoy science fiction? "Turing Evolved" - AI, Mecha, Androids and rail-gun battles. What more could you want?
how is this flamebait? it was like +5 a minute ago!
he makes valid points..don't mod down if you disagree with someone, debate them
not that i necessarily agree with all his points, but i hate when the majority silences someone because they hold a differing opinion that wasn't at all inflammatory (okay, the "anti-riaa psychos" part was a bit much, but it wasn't directed at anyone in particular)
RIAA: "My god! We'll be ruined! Gentlemen, we have to protect our phoney baloney jobs!" (Apologies to Mel Brooks' "Blazing Saddles".)
By using your purchasing power, you decide the fate of these almost-Nazi-like corporations. Send them the message where it hurts them the most, The Bottom Line. By denying the RIAA your hard earned dollars, their shareholders suffer. And while they'll claim p2p responsible for further reductions in sales (as if the economy, CD prices, the thousands of stupid lawsuits that contribute to the price of a CD aren't enough), the truth will be shown that the above study, and other studies that have shown the RIAA incorrect, are in fact true, and the RIAA will be forced not only to rethink their PR strategy, but their ailing dinosaur of a business model.
The number of independant bands/labels has increased a hell of a lot, and of course the quality of the music is superior simply because there isn't the corporate pressure to compromise musical integrity just to satisfy a shareholder. I discovered a progressive rock stream, progrock.com, via an article here on SlashDot regarding the current release of IceCast. This stream has been the main source of bands whose CDs I now purchase.
I haven't purchased an RIAA affiliated CD in probably over 5 years because they haven't released anything worth buying, especially at US$20 a CD. During that time I've been purchasing independant CDs from non-RIAA affiliated labels, and I do so gladly knowing the artist receives more of the money, and the quality of music is far superior. The cost of these CDs is typically US$5-US$7 (not including S&H) cheaper than RIAA affiliated labels CDs too.
As an independant artist, I offer my own original music in mp3 format, freely downloadable, and distributable, see the link in the sig below.
Seeing how its conclusions can be summed up as "popular songs that sell more copies are also downloaded more often" (HOLY SHIT STOP THE PRESSES, YOU MEAN POPULAR SONGS ARE POPULAR???) seems to me the work's been done for them. Who bankrolls this crap?
Radio killed the live performance. Video killed the radio star. Quad was supposed to kill stereo. Cassettes killed vinyl. CD's killed cassettes. DVD's killed cd's. The internet killed books and magazines. The internet killed music. Haven't we heard this time and time again? I used to buy about 4 cd's a month. One a week. If you adjust minimum wage for inflation people today make less than people in 1969. If a person doesn't have a job or a high paying job they will not be able to buy anything outside of food and essentials. Even so, Social security supposedly is going bankrupt. Jobs are going down the drain. America is becoming a little banana republic. But somebody wants to blame you for the lower value in everything. They want you the citizen to be at fault and to blame. A corporation is pointing a finger in your face saying you are a thief. Yet Enron drools over offshore banking and tyco pay themselves whatever they feel. Who are the real pirates? Whatever happened to inexpensive healthcare? It seems some people would use and waste taxpayer money to find citizens guilty of sharing music but never bother to use that money to create or maintain jobs so these people could at least attempt to buy music. If you make less than $10 per hour you might as well expect not to get by. Many people make less than that. Do not forget about people that are not as skilled or as fortunate. You don't hate your adversary and attempt to lock them up or inhibit their ability to provide for themselves. We are supposed to take care of each other. As far as i can tell...if you took all the tax write off bands and all the ripped off artists out there in the world it would not be shocking to find that they made little to nothing off their works. A little karma is what's been happening lately. Also when an industry centered around youth ends up becoming the playground of middle aged bankers and accountants...art is the last thing thought about(not always). I remember in the 90's as all my friends or favorite bands were signed to major labels and watched in anger as all of them were canned for one consolidation or another. Instant karma. Maybe their will be less recording moguls...maybe instead they will find something else better to do like find a cure for cancer or figure a theory of everything or time travel. Imagine that. Then they could travel back to when there was no internet and make a killing creating artists in some alternate universe! Eventhough i can download tons of music i still buy about 30-40 cd's a year. Same as it ever was. Only now i make sure the labels read something like thrill jockey, sonig, warp or some other thing more obscure. Or i pick one up at the show so the band has gas money.
Yes, I know exactly what you're saying, and I'm saying you guys are being too uptight with the use of the words. Common convention supports my argument that people commonly employ much stronger words to describe a relatively less severe act. For example, my native/white man "raping" the land example. In actuality, it wasn't "raping" the land, it was stealing it and polluting it. "Rape" is a much more severe, violent, invasive crime. Theft and pollution are comparitively "softer" crimes.
So don't get all bent out of shape when people do the same thing with copyright infringement.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
"Um, how is the artist supposed to make his *fair* share of money? In your utopia, is all digital content (be it audio, video, software, e-books, etc) to be free?"
What is "fair"? Jack Worker slaves all day in a coal mine to make enough money to support his family. Does Joe Musician expect to write a couple of songs, record them, and then lie back and let the money flow in?
Doesn't sound fair to me!
Who says artists are somehow an exception from the rule that you have to work hard to get things done?
If the artist wants to make money, then he should play concerts, sell merchandise, etc. Only in YOUR utopia is it fair that the artist doesn't do crap, and just lets the money flow in.
In the real world, PEOPLE HAVE TO WORK, and I see NO reason why this shouldn't apply to artists as well.
YOU want the artist to do the work ONCE, and then profit from it. That is RIDICULOUS. I have no sympathy for Joe Artist. Let him work like everyone else. Hey, he does something he loves to do so, why can't he work hard to make money from it?
Heh. Slow day at work. I wanted to see how far that one would go. This one went pretty far and even ended on the classic childish "I win I win! I can't hear you! lalalalalala! (fingers in ears)" note. I promise not to feed any more.
P.S.
The next time someone argues infringment is theft, just throw Supreme Court rulings at them. Dowling v. United States, 473 U.S. 207 (1985) is an excellent example:
"the rights of a copyright holder are `different' from the rights of owners of other kinds of property" etc....
I will definitely make a note of that. For some reason I feel compelled to educate people here on /. about the difference between copyright infringement and property crime. I don't know why I bother-- it's like beating your head against a wall. No matter how often you point out the reality, some goofball comes along and says, in response to a story, "quit trying to justify stealing. downloading MP3s is theft!"
I've noticed, however, that the latest favorite troll is the "GPL variation", wherein they claim that it is morally inconsistent to infringe on music copyrights while supporting the idea of GPL software. Still trying to craft a simple, easily understood couterargument to that one...
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
*Cough*. Beach Boys, Beatles... I could name dozens of classic bands that have uplifting feel-good music, but simultaneously keep their mouths away from any and all pole-polishing.
(They don't suck)