RIAA Loss Report Contradicts Nielsen Sales Record

DerekAtLC writes "In a not-so-surprising twist of the tables, RIAA reporting of 'losses' is a little bit off. An interesting blurb at Ars Technica referencing a Kensei News article points out that Nielsen's Soundscan (Which tracks retail point-of-sale numbers for the music industry) shows a 10% increase in sales from Q1 2003 to Q1 2004. The RIAA has recently reported drops in revenue from last year, citing online piracy as the main problem. The crux of the issue? The RIAA hasn't been talking about sales or revenue in terms of sales to consumers or money generated via those sales. The RIAA talks about losses in terms of number of units shipped to retail outlets. The article points out plenty of problems with this (and reasons why we are seeing the trend), but it is fairly obvious that the RIAA is not reporting the most 'useful' numbers to the public."

Comments

Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[LostCluster]

Another interesting thing has happened over the last few years. The growth of mega-chains such as Best Buy plus the .com's joining into the marketplace have knocked mom and pop record stores out of existance.

Less stores selling music means not only are stores keeping smaller inventories, but some store inventories fell to zero as they left the business. There's just plain less "unsold" disks sitting in the system.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[AhBeeDoi]

Less stores selling music means not only are stores keeping smaller inventories, but some store inventories fell to zero as they left the business. There's just plain less "unsold" disks sitting in the system.

This seems like a highly debateable point as to causes of lower inventory levels. Traditionally, inventory levels have been an indirect measure of confidence in the economy. However, utilization of JIT methods aided by technology enables businesses to run at lower levels than previously thought acceptable. In fact, there really isn't any contradiction to the principles of economic order quantity because both ordering costs and turn around times are much lower. This is truly a new paradign.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Anonymous Coward]

fewer, not less...

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[fimbulvetr]

Isn't this the opposite of capitalism?

For years, I had to go to run down stores with poor customer service and no inventory. Now, I can order online.

Why would we want to go backwards? Aren't we supposed to evolve? If you want your mom and pop store to succeed, shouldn't you be searching for a niche/market in which you excel? Do you think the world really owes your mom and pop store a favor?

I don't think so. I hate *most* mom and pop stores. Too many salesmen, too many commissions. Too little inventory, too poor customer service. Too high prices, too many just grunge music fans.

When I buy online, I hear reviews from people that listen to MY music. Not yours, I'm not limited to some little twat that only listens to such and such music.

Note to moderators - This post is objective.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[lidocaineus]

Too many salesmen, too many commissions. Too little inventory, too poor customer service. Too high prices, too many just grunge music fans.

Uh, isn't that most huge chains? And what customer service are you referring to from any online store? Customer service to them is tracking your order. Let's take music stores for example.

Killer mom-and-pop stores still exist ESPECIALLY in record sales; in big cities (like Chicago) where the music scene is all about a well stocked record store, it's MUCH preferred over a chain. You walk into the store, hum a few lines, and it can be pretty damn impressive when the guy behind the counter a) knows who you are and b) can name the tune immediately. Not to mention the fact that they know what you like and drop you tidbits about what's coming out, and if you like certain bands, that you'll like certain OTHER bands, on top of which, special ordering is sooo painless most of the time. They also more often than not have a pulse on what's going on locally. And where do you get this limited selection bs?? I find MORE stuff at my local record store (and not even the obscure and/or local stuff) down the street, along with a whole slew of imports. Half the time I can't find the exact stuff I want online, like a very specific concerto recording (almost always easily found by my fave classical music place) or that Jawbreaker import that has been out of print forever.

Now don't get me wrong; I also love places like amazon when I know exactly what I want... but no internet store is going to take the place of stopping in at Reckless and chatting (or arguing!) with the music geeks on both sides of the counter about the newest album releases, etc etc.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Phragmen-Lindelof]

"This is truly a new paradign." ??
I think this is a very old (political) paradign, "Lie and lie (and bribe and bribe) until you get what you want."
I would be extremely refreshing to see a statement from a congressman saying something like "I originally found the data from the RIAA to very persuasive and announced support for House bill xyz. In light of this additional data, I believe we should allow more time to pass before considering legislation and I am therefore withdrawing my support of xyz." What do you think are the chances that this will occur?

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Jim Starx]

When he said new paradigm he was talking about the economic factors that bring about the lower inventories, not about the RIAA.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Lodragandraoidh]

Just-in-time supply processes are more common nowadays: you have the store and the manufacturer connected via computer - and the manufacturer automatically knows when levels drop for a particular item - so they can make/ship more to replace the ones leaving the shelves at a variable rate, so shelves remained stocked.

This allows stores to keep less (or no) inventory in storerooms - allowing more retail space, and thus less costs accrewed for storage space.

I know Best Buy must use this model, because if it runs out on the shelves they generally don't have anything in storage as a backup.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, isn't that most huge chains?

Uh, no?

And what customer service are you referring to from any online store? Customer service to them is tracking your order.

Are you a moron or just pretending? The domain of customer service is information. Meatspace stores require humans to serve and process sought information. Brick/mortar "Customer service" would be anachronistic if implemented online (though some retailers, like Dell and IBM, do have live chat operators available to meet the needs of like-minded morons who can't grok pulling content).

Killer mom-and-pop stores still exist ESPECIALLY in record sales; in big cities (like Chicago) where the music scene is all about a well stocked record store, it's MUCH preferred over a chain.

Preferred? By whom? By you?

You walk into the store, hum a few lines, and it can be pretty damn impressive when the guy behind the counter a) knows who you are and b) can name the tune immediately. Not to mention the fact that they know what you like and drop you tidbits about what's coming out, and if you like certain bands, that you'll like certain OTHER bands, on top of which, special ordering is sooo painless most of the time.

You still haven't named an advantage over online retailers yet, you know.

They also more often than not have a pulse on what's going on locally.

So does Google, and it isn't constrained to some clerk tool's subjective whims!

And where do you get this limited selection bs?? I find MORE stuff at my local record store (and not even the obscure and/or local stuff) down the street, along with a whole slew of imports. Half the time I can't find the exact stuff I want online, like a very specific concerto recording (almost always easily found by my fave classical music place) or that Jawbreaker import that has been out of print forever.

And most of the time I can't find anything I want in meatspace. Anecdotes are fun, aren't they?

Now don't get me wrong; I also love places like amazon when I know exactly what I want... but no internet store is going to take the place of stopping in at Reckless and chatting (or arguing!) with the music geeks on both sides of the counter about the newest album releases, etc etc.

Why not? Because you arbitrarily say it won't? If you want to argue with music geeks, why not just do that? Why do you need a music store? What does that have to do with PURCHASING MUSIC? Or is your claim that meatspace stores, with their music snobs and geeks and random catalogs of maybe-rare items that someone somewhere might one day want, offer "added value" even though they don't offer dick over and above online retailers in terms of actually buying music?

That's it, that's all, baby goes to sleep.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Note to moderators - This post is objective."

Note to poster: It's not objective just cuz you say it is.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[Kiryat Malachi]

You're cute. You're actually claiming that BestBuy and Walmart and similar mega-stores, or Amazon, have better customer service, than a decent record store?

Chicago record stores (Hard Boiled, Reckless, Gramaphone, etc.) are generally a lot better than online. Why? They don't have shitty clerks. They have people who work there because they like music, because they sure as hell aren't there for the money they're getting paid. If you need to ask an employee about something, they're right there; no navigating a touchtone jail.

The people in the record store know about music. If they don't know about exactly what you're interested in, they probably know exactly which one of their coworkers does. They probably have some idea of when the band whose CD you just bought is going to be in town, or when their new record is coming out.

Amazon and such online are good if I know exactly what I want, it isn't a local musician, and I don't mind waiting for it to show up. For some styles of music, Amazon isn't acceptable at all; they'll never replace my once per year trip to Other Music in NYC for noise records. If I just want to flip through records, no online store will ever take the place of walking into the stacks and doing just that - flipping through records until something catches my eye. And let's not forget that I can listen to it as soon as I walk out of the store (or when I get home and rip it to MP3).

And Google doesn't know a damn thing about what's going on locally; generally the best way to find out about local shows is through the Reader (or local equivalent in other cities) and through knowing people who are putting those shows on.

Pulling content only works if you know what you want; and most people would prefer real personal contact to listening to some Belle and Sebastian-listening tool rant on a chatboard. Even if I have to listen to the music store clerk rant about Belle and Sebastian, at least I can punch him in the mouth.

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[geoskd]

This seems like a highly debateable point as to causes of lower inventory levels. Traditionally, inventory levels have been an indirect measure of confidence in the economy. However, utilization of JIT methods aided by technology enables businesses to run at lower levels than previously thought acceptable. In fact, there really isn't any contradiction to the principles of economic order quantity because both ordering costs and turn around times are much lower. This is truly a new paradign.

Just in time delivery is a Huge contributor to improvements in profitability. If you look at the cost of storing a single CD in on-site inventory for 3 months, you'll find that it amounts to almost $5 per unit over that time period. That means that by only having the inventory on site an average of a week or less reduces the retailers costs dramitacally. Haven't you ever wondered why wallmart can beat the musc chains prices every time? its not because of a volume discount... The record labels don't give *anyone* discounts. Its because of Just in time delivery services. Walmart gets their JIT services from UPS. The typical CD or Movie arrives at a given walmart store less than one week before it is sold. This is worlds better than HMV, FYE, Strawberries who traditionally sat on inventory as much as a year before either returning or selling it. If you look at the result, walmart ends up hardly returning any inventory to the manufacturer, because they never have enough left over to justify paying the return shipment fee. Remember, as with almost any product based industry shipping and storing costs account for the largest chunk of the pie. You have to be talking something the size of a washing machine before that is no longer true. walmart stores all of their inventory *on the shelves* making it all active inventory, but they never seem to run out... Its because the JIT computer systems automatically reorder when the on shelf levels reach a threshold. Then every morning, the employees take whatever shows up on the UPS truck and stock it on the shelves. No more doing a daily inventory to find out what needs to be restocked. The basic result is that all the waste is gone from the system. That means that walmart (and many of the other large retailers) are no longer ordering stock simply to throw it away in 6 months. It allows them to save money by not buying stuff from the labels that they can't sell. That is the real reason that the labels aren't selling as much: The retailers aren't buying and wasting as much of the material.

-=Geoskd

Re:Out of business stores dont keep inventory.

[FurryFeet]

You're both right.
Mom and Pop stores serve a niche. And, whether you realize it or not, you are part of a niche.
I realized that when I saw your last paragraph, and noticed it didn't sound appealing at all to me, or most of my acquaintances.
Most people don't care enough about music to take the time to chat about it at a store. So, you're the niche, and the mom and pop store caters to you.
QED

No surprise there

[jbellis]

So the RIAA won't stop at bending the facts a little -- okay, a lot -- on their way to ripping fair use out of America. Nothing we didn't know.

What will be interesting will be to see how much play this gets in the mainstream media. Probably no more than any of the other facts that aren't convenient for the "hackers steal $billions on teh intarweb" headlines they like to run. :-|

Re:No surprise there

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

We need to stop hacking the gibson and fighting Penn Jillette for control of the Main Kernel, and try to find a way to get this kind of news into the papers. Write to the editor, tell your friends.. anything to get people to understand the facts.

Re:No surprise there

[Anonymous Coward]

you're right.... why would CNN (a division of time warner or whoever) go hard on warner music and its trade group?

don't worry, the only place we'll be hearing about this kind of news is in the little news outlets and blogs.

Re:No surprise there

[luke923]

Considering the relatively liberal use of the word 'pithy' found in the article, I'm sure Bill O'Reilly would find it of interest.

Dont forget

[Datasage]

They also tend to count every single pirated copy as a loss. Even though, if forced to buy, most of it would not be purchased.

Re:Dont forget

[dirk]

What is the alternative to doing this? Ask every person who pirates a copy if they would have bought it and take them at their word? There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it (and please no diatribe on whether steal is the right word). Obviously either way you want the music. So if you stole it, it should be considered a lost sale, as you obviously wanted the music but chose to steal it instead of buying it. Yes, people will steal more than they would buy, but that doesn't change the fact they wanted the music to begin with, which certainly points toward a possible sale.

Re:Dont forget

[EvanED]

"What is the alternative to doing this? Ask every person who pirates a copy if they would have bought it and take them at their word?"

Ask a representative sample and extrapolate? Maybe increase the numbers a bit to compensate for lying.

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

> There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it

No, there are 3 ways: Buy it, Steal It or Copy It

Copyright Infringement is not theft. It is kinda "like" theft, except nobody is left without the stolen item.

Until online music stores allowed you to buy music on demand for a single track, the only way to get music on demand for a single track was to commit copyright infringement.

Many students download music. They don't have music to spend on the music. How this can be termed a "lost sale" is beyond me. More like "free music for students might lead to future purchases when they have money" ... this works for Microsoft and software. Let's not get onto percieved value of music either - I buy most of my music at between 3 and 7 a CD from a store called FOPP in the UK, or online at play.com. This is what I consider a reasonable price for a CD. Not 14 to 18 that most new music comes out at - especially if I've only heard one or two tracks from the CD. Singles are overpriced as well ... 1.99 including video would be acceptable ... not the 3.99 or more that many of them are.

I'm sorry, but steal is the wrong word.

Re:Dont forget

[SlimFastForYou]

I am somewhat reminded of a post regarding the appraisal of the Asian software market, and some of the ways the BSA calculates losses. From what I remember, it went something like this:

If Autocad Super Deluxe Enterprise Edition costs $10,000, and 100 Chinese children install it on their home PC, it obviously cost the industry One Million Dollars!

Same difference. If the RIAA stopped being a bunch of whiners and offered a P2P service for $10/mo, they would make SO much money. $120/year is MUCH MUCH more than I spend on CDs in a year. Unfortunately, some organizations are too set in their ways such that they wouldn't know opportunity if it threw a suitcase of money at them.

Re:Dont forget

[Asetilean]

Obviously either way you want the music. So if you stole it, it should be considered a lost sale, as you obviously wanted the music but chose to steal it instead of buying it.

Not true. Hypothetical example: I'll grab a copy of the latest Creed album (insert favorite over-hyped band here) if it's free and yeah, maybe I'll listen to it once or twice, but it's not worth it to me to pay $17.99, $15.99 or even $12.99 to be able to listen to it. So no, not every download is a lost sale. It's just basic economics:

• 10 people will buy it at $20
• 15 will buy it at $17
• 30 will buy it at $12
• 90 people will buy it at $1
• and millions will "buy" it for free.

Re:Dont forget

[Joey7F]

Wait hold the phone, you are saying there are ten people that listen to creed?

--Joey

Re:Dont forget

[RedWizzard]

What is the alternative to doing this? ... So if you stole it, it should be considered a lost sale, as you obviously wanted the music but chose to steal it instead of buying it.

Bullshit. I want a Lamborghini Murciélago. If I go out and steal one from a dealer that is not a lost sale because even though I wanted it I was never going to buy it. Same thing with music. A pirated CD is not automatically a lost sale, it is only a lost potential sale. There is a vast chasm between a reasonable and realistic estimate of lost sales due to piracy and assuming that every pirated CD worth of music is $20 of lost revenue for the publishers. That the RIAA persist is pushing their obvious false view of the piracy situation underscores their own dishonesty and deceit.

Re:Dont forget

[Qzukk]

There are 2 ways to get music

Congratulations! You have fallen into their trap. The RIAA desperately wants you to believe that you have to buy music from them, and heck I bet they'd even settle for you stealing music for them (hey, if all that unchecked windows piracy got MS where it is now...)

But they don't want you to know about the other way to get music:

Make it

Yeah. Independent music will be the death of the RIAA yet. When you've had enough of britney spears strutting around on stage and crooning the same old same old, turn to the indie scene and see what people are making. Nobody good enough? Pick up an instrument and see if you can do better.

Don't expect to get a giant audience. Once the RIAA has convinced everyone that its illegal to share music online, they'll steal the copyrights of all the music and have the government declare themselves the sole recipient of any money for distribution of music, like they have for webcasting. Once that happens, you'll be hard pressed to find anything to let you record and distribute your songs for free, even if you wanted to.

So, just sit back, enjoy the canned music, and don't mind the RIAA as they wheedle and lie into the monopoly position.

Re:Dont forget

[evought]

The alternative is to account for the loss, like everyone else does, rather than attempting to mock up some elusive misdirected profit figure. For example:

I make a product; let's say it's a limited edition Newt Gingrich action figure. It costs me $2 worth of materials and I pay various employees about $1 worth of labor per item. Figure another buck in there for distribution costs. I sell these items for $28.50.

Now someone steals one of these little items. What have I lost? By normal accounting, approximately four bucks. By the RIAAs accounting, $28.50. Sure, $28.50 is what they list for, but does that mean that if I decide to list them for $285 each that my loss per item is now ten times as much, even though no one is buying them at that price? This is like those adds which throw in several free items and claim "A four hundred dollar value, only $19.95.". The only legitimate way to account for loss is by demonstrating what the item cost, not what you are asking for it. In fact, such accounting is circular, since the list price of a product invariably includes a markup to account for losses due to shoplifting.

Now, let's take this one step further. Someone sees one of my action figures in the store and, since they cannot afford one, goes home, looks at one the neighbor just bought and makes one which looks just like it. (My grandmother did this with Cabbage Patch Kids while I was growing up. She would make them for the kids whose parents could not buy them.) Now how much has the manufacturer lost? By any normal accounting, absolutely nothing: no materials, no labor, no distribution costs.

If this is done on a massive scale, then some loss of market can be alleged. On the other hand, most of the loss is not caused by the "theft", but by the fact that the manufacturer priced themselves out of a market. If those action figures where sold for $6 (a healthy 50% margin), someone would probably not waste time trying to duplicate it. My grandmother would not be making cottage industry Cabbage Patch Kids if they had sold for $10 apiece instead of $150+. This scenario only occurs when the price of an item is totally out of line with what it really costs to make the item.

Now, the unfortunate part of this, is that people should respond by supporting local, independent artists instead of copying RIAA distributed music. That may be, but you should recall that the RIAA has worked very hard to squash the distribution of anything they don't control. I happen to know a bunch of small-time musicians and performers and personally, I would rather support them then copy the crap that the RIAA publishes and, personally, I do. But, just like kids getting tormented in school for not having a Cabbage Patch Kid (and kids can be vicious, it is hard, even as adults, to not be mainstream and listen to mainstream things. The various cartels have made mainstream music and movies a requirement for participating in modern culture. If you don't have it, you aren't with it, you can wait outside.

Re:Dont forget

[Daniel]

This actually is a bad analogy: you might not have bought the car, but *someone* probably would have. Since only one person can be in possession of a particular car, your (hopefully hypothetical) theft IS a lost sale: not only does the owner lose the potential sale to you, they also lose the potential sale to every other customer on the planet.

This is analogous to walking into a CD store, taking a CD off the shelf, and walking out without paying. The difference between shoplifting and making an extra copy of a CD is left as an exercise for the reader.

Daniel

Re:Dont forget

[FiloEleven]

Actually, that's a poor comparison. If you steal a car, it does result in a lost sale, because a potential buyer no longer has the option to buy that car - the stock is gone. However, when copying music, the original merch is never taken from the owner - hence the difference between theft and copyright violation.

Re:Dont forget

[Roydd McWilson]

There is one severe problem with your reasoning here: you only account for variable costs, i.e. the marginal amount spent per item produced; you completely ignore fixed costs, which must be amortized over all items sold. For your examples, most of the cost is variable cost, so the impact of a small number of thefts on fixed cost can essentially be ignored. In the case of music or video recordings or software, variable costs are miniscule, but up-front fixed costs are huge. So the marginal cost to the producer of a CD in a box or a pirated copy is almost the same, but the former can act as a vehicle to amortize fixed costs, while the latter cannot. How does your model take this into account?

Re:Dont forget

[Ateryx]

Wait hold the phone, you are saying there are ten people that listen to creed?

No. It was a hypothetical example, because no one listens to Creed.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

No, there are 3 ways: Buy it, Steal It or Copy It

You're being redundant. The last two are the same thing. Copying it is the same thing as stealing. Insist that the law has different definitions to fit specific classifications, but it's still theft.

This is like saying, I killed that old lady because she was going to die anyways. It's not murder. Ya, bad example but theft is theft.

People only jump on this train so they can attempt to morally justify their theft and not feel guilty about it. Theft is theft. If you're taking music that you should of paid for and didn't, you're a friggen theif! In this case, you're attempting to justify theft by saying only "students" steal music. That's not true. And, I can tell you, there are plenty of students that are driving nice cars with high end audio equipment, money for dates, nice food, and beer, but no money for their stolen music. Ya, that certainly sounds justified.

Re:Dont forget

[shepd]

>and please no diatribe on whether steal is the right word

Ok. Instead can I point out a third method to obtain music that isn't shoplifting (everthing you mentioned, by the way, is bang on for the word stealing, so yes, you are right, that's a valid method to obtain music)?

Pirating it.

That being said...

>Yes, people will steal more than they would buy, but that doesn't change the fact they wanted the music to begin with, which certainly points toward a possible sale.

Oddly enough, most stolen goods end up in pawn shops or quickly resold to someone else. Rarely is anything stolen kept for personal use. Probably has something to do with the fact that being caught with torn apart CD security covers isn't going to do much for your defence in court...

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

What is the alternative to doing this? Ask every person who pirates a copy if they would have bought it and take them at their word? There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it

There's actually a third way: copy it.

Re:Dont forget

[darkewolf]

I can't add much to this. But hear hear!

Especially the 'Make it!' bit.

Its one solution I have found. Plus as a result I have gotten to know a number of other bands (well quite a few) who send me copies of their CDs (the CDr scene is doing well it seems for indie bands..)

Re:Dont forget

[luke923]

That's not true. Don't you watch South Park? The reason Creed has an audience is because it's Christian Crossover.

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

You are wrong.

That is why there is a law for theft, and a law for infringing copyright.

What if matter duplicators existed? I drive a nice car into one, and get a copy for the price of a pile of trash that got converted into the new car. Is that theft? I return the car to the owner, and now I have one myself. I've gained, but the loss to someone else is much less (I might have bought a second hand car because I couldn't afford the new one, or just kept on using the old car). Especially if the car makers were using these matter duplicators themselves to make a car for $100 instead of $10000, but still selling cars for $40000.

You must come from a different planet from me if students who leave university with 20k + debts ($100k I read in the US) have lots of spare money to splash out on overpriced CDs. Maybe those students you talk about aren't leeching music.

Re:Dont forget

[mog007]

I believe the grandparent's definition of "steal it" means to actully steal the CD from the store, and "copy it" would be either downloading from a p2p program, or getting a friend that already has the CD to make a copy.

Re:Dont forget

[hankdmoose]

If I go to an art museum and take a picture of a painting or a sculpture, that is not theft. If I then post that photograph on my website, I am not trafficking in stolen goods.

Theft requires that there a tangible object involved. Data is not a tangible object. That's all music is. As long as I don't physically remove a CD from a store without paying for it, I am not stealing anything.

Yes, you can argue till you're blue in the face that I'm depriving lots of people of their money if I download 2 songs rather than shelling out the $15 to get those 2 songs plus 8 to 10 crap filler tracks legally, plus a bunch of bonus Enhanced CD material that I don't want, anyway. But I'm not taking it from them. They never had it in their hands to begin with. Thus: not theft.

That doesn't make it right, but it's not theft.

Re:Dont forget

[snooo53]

$10 a month for unlimited downloads sounds great... although I don't think people would go for it for one simple reason... the P2P part. If they're paying $10 a month I can't see many people being willing to share their upload bandwidth, especially people on dial up and those with picky broadband providers. Maybe the solution to this though is treat bandwidth like a $$ credit. For every 100mb uploaded we take a dollar off your monthly fee. (of course then you're probably opening yourself up to some sort of scheme where a group of friends just downloads everything from each other)

The solution I see is the magic $5 price point for cds. Then you're getting into the range where it's harder to justify piracy or going to the trouble of burning your own, for the simple fact that you get a shiny new pressed cd with artwork for a low price. Plus $5 is like the magic number in the U.S. since you can get a value meal at most fast food places for that. I think a lot of people would go for that because it's easy to justify $5 since a cd is more permanent than a meal and americans are good at rationalizing away things like that. Oh I skipped breakfast=$5 so I'm breaking even for the day.

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

No, there are 5 ways.

You can also have it given as a present.

You can also borrow it from a library or friend.

next up : $0.99 per play. RIAA's wetdream.

Let them shit the bed I say.

Re:Dont forget

[Savage650]

[..] you completely ignore fixed costs, which must be amortized over all items sold. [..]

What fixed costs are incurred by the RIAA? buying politicians, exorbitant management salaries, keeping an army of lawyers?

The often-quoted "one successful album has to cover for ten others that never pay their own cost" is a red herring. This industry has been flooding the market with (mostly) unsuccessful products. Do they reconsider their buiseness model? No! They just raise the prices.

Thought experiment: Let's suppose the music industry managed to double their monthly output of new products. Does that double their sales? Unlikely, because all these products compete for the same amount of money that the customers are willing/able to spend on music.

Following their argument, they now have to raise the prices. But wait! Didn't we assume a fixed amount of money avaliable to the customers? If the market volume (amount of $ spent) is constant, a price hike decreases the number of sales. Uh Oh! Now even more albums fail to break even, so the prices have to go up even more...

Moral: The RIAA's busines model is broken. We know it, they know it. But instead of fixing it, they decided to "invest" in political influence.

Re:Dont forget

[MadKeithV]

You must come from a different planet from me if students who leave university with 20k + debts ($100k I read in the US) have lots of spare money to splash out on overpriced CDs.

There are plenty of countries on THIS planet that aren't dumb enough to put people that want an education into a huge pile of debt.

Re:Dont forget

[91degrees]

(and please no diatribe on whether steal is the right word).

Since you already know many of us (including the entire judicial system) disagree that copying is stealing, why use that word?

which certainly points toward a possible sale.

But only a "possible" sale. Hell, even if I shoplifted it, the shop I stole it from has only lost the amount they paid for it.

Re:Dont forget

[trezor]

• No, there are 3 ways: Buy it, Steal It or Copy It
  You're being redundant. The last two are the same thing.

You're knowingly being an asshat. Stealing implies taking a physical object, thus taking something away from the owner.

Copying takes nothing away from the owner. Yes, maybe I'll keep it and not pay up, maybe I'll pay up immidiatly because I liked it, or next month when I got the cash.

Really, who's to tell what happens? We don't know. That still doesn't alter the legal freakin facts. Stealing is stealing is theft. Copying is copying is copyright infringement which is not theft.

You know this, so stop being an farking asshat. Fsck off.

This ever repeated discussion is noticably more uninteresting then the infamous GPL vs. BSD flaming, except here you provably are wrong. So fsck off.

/flamebaint for flamebaiter intended.
Feel free to mod that way. I just want to get the message trough to this farking flamebait.

Re:Dont forget

[Soul-Burn666]

Am I the only one who thinks Slashdot might be the only place on earth the parent comment can be modded "informative"? ;)

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't make fun of Creed! Their music is uplifting and nice. And it's not repititious crap from people who should be teaching Sunday school instead of being in a "rock band". They are nice guys who are also good Christians. Making millions off of your faith isn't unethical!

Re:Dont forget

[PMuse]

> There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it

No, there are 3 ways: Buy it, Steal It or Copy It

Where along the line did we forget Make It?

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're still talking about CD's, there are a lot of fixed costs in the CD factory, the distribution infrastructure and the stores you buy the stuff from.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

Wow! Serious loser mods don't know the difference between someone with an opinion and someone trolling. That's pretty sad.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

Nope, your grandparents definition much more likely means you took something to which you have no rights to take. That's stealing. People who do this with music is just as much a theif as anyone that steals a CD from a store. The only difference is that it's the artist and not the store that is harmed.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

Nope!

You're wrong on just about everything you stated. And that's the problem!

Stealing is taking anything to which you have no rights to take. Fact is, if you copied a CD and gave it to a friend, as a result, you stole money directly from the pocket of the artist. Ya, I understand that there are principaled exceptions. Just the same, theft is theft. The artist suffers and you gain. That's theft.

Now then, the fact that you're a complete idiot probably explains why have no morales and can't figure out that you're a loser stealing stuff from others.

Re:Dont forget

[Anonymous Coward]

Especially in Sacramento, where they have canceled all 4 of the shows they have had scheduled here - losers.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

Wrong. On every account.

Take a picture of your CD and then your example will actually mean somthing. Go on. Take a picture of your CD and send it to your friends. That's the only way your example makes any sense.

Theft requires taking something to which you have no rights and have not paid for, especially when payment is expected. The only difference is here, in stead of a store lossing out, you're hurting and ripping off the artist.

Re:Dont forget

[hankdmoose]

Take a picture of your CD and then your example will actually mean somthing. Go on. Take a picture of your CD and send it to your friends. That's the only way your example makes any sense.

No no no... that makes no sense whatsoever. The example I gave was making a copy of a form of art so that I can enjoy that piece of art without paying for it. It's the exact same thing as copying a CD or downloading it off of the internet. Making a copy of a work of art for the sole purpose of enjoying it without paying. YOUR example, on the other hand, makes no sense.

Theft requires taking something to which you have no rights and have not paid for, especially when payment is expected.

Theft has nothing to do with payment. If you come to my house and steal my TV, that's just as much a theft as if you took a TV from Best Buy. If I make a photocopy of a picture you took (see above explanation for why this example parallels the discussion), you still have your original. Therefore, I took nothing. There is nothing tangible being removed from your possession. As has been stated MANY times in this thread, you are not a victim of a theft in that case. You are the victim of a copyright violation. You still have your original. Yes, there is a difference.

The only difference is here, in stead of a store lossing out, you're hurting and ripping off the artist.

There are other differences. Here's one. Shoplifting hurts everyone. The store doesn't get their money, so they in turn raise prices to compensate. They pass that on to the consumer, who on average makes significantly less than those who are hurt by music piracy. I don't feel sorry for James Hetfield if my little brother steals the Black Album. James Hetfield's bathroom is bigger than my house. I feel sorry for my little brother if he went out and bought St. Anger. That's $15 not even worthy of sitting under a drink.

How many times have you gone out and spent that hard-earned $15 on a CD from which you'd heard a couple of great singles, only to get home and find out that those were the only two songs on the entire disc worth two shits? Did you feel ripped off? The only difference is, $15 to me is a couple an hour or two of work. That same $15, divided amongst all involved amounts to less than a note. Yeah, those $15 add up when 10 million people do it. But perhaps the record execs should take a hint and realize people don't want filler bullshit. They want their money's worth.

It's not theft. It's civil disobedience.

Re:Dont forget

[GooberToo]

No no no... that makes no sense whatsoever.

I think you missed the boat completely.

In your example, whereby you took a picture, a picture is in now way, shape, or form, going to deprive the artist from selling his painting. The size and quality does not compare. On the other hand, if you take a picture of your CD, it exactly matches what you're trying to make a point about. On the other hand, if you make a copy of the CD, you have exactly matched pretty much every aspect of the original and then using it for free, without paying the artist. This too, is illegal and is a *form of* theft. Just like copying that CD is a *form of* theft. Period. Copying music which you do not have a right to do so, is stealing. Doing so, makes you a thief. If we take you example, and exactly reproduce the artist's paintig so that even the artist can not tell the difference, he will rightly so claim you've stolen his work, or at a minimum, diluted the original's value. Either way, you've horribly wronged the artist. Same applies to CD's. It really doesn't matter if you consider it stealing, which it is, but the fact remains, it's something that only unethical people do.

Theft has nothing to do with payment.

Theft has everything to do with payment. Walk into a store and walk out with something you didn't pay for and argue with the store manager and police. Please let me know too so that I can laugh and point eith the police and the store manager while you insist that your theft has nothing to do with payment. LOL. That's insanely funny and foolish.

The store doesn't get their money, so they in turn raise prices to compensate. They pass that on to the consumer, who on average makes significantly less than those who are hurt by music piracy.

And the exact same thing applies to stolen music too. What was your point? The result of stealing CD's means that the RIAA has to put more filler crap onto CD's so that they can sell more CD's to make up for the profits that you've stolen. Likewise, the artist makes less money because you stole his work without paying him for it. This means that your theft is forcing all of other consumers to pick the cost.

How many times have you gone out and spent that hard-earned $15 on a CD from which you'd heard a couple of great singles, only to get home and find out that those were the only two songs on the entire disc worth two shits?

Well, I don't buy CD's, so the answer is simple. Beyond that, if you think it has a bunch of crap on it, DON'T FRIGGEN BUY IT! NO ONE IS MAKING YOU BUY CRAP! Worse, you can use common sense and not buy the CD. Worse still, if you actually wanted to be ethical, versus a thief, you could only buy the songs that you like an save some money at the same time. What a friggen concept.

t's civil disobedience.

That's complete BS! If you want to be civil disobedient, protest. Just because you are being disobedient, does not justify ripping off the artist nor stealing his works. Furthermore, breaking the law is breaking the law. Regardless of whatever lie you want to tell you self, illegal actions are still illegal and your are still hurting the artist. Want to do something that actually makes sense, stop buying their friggen music! Wow! What a concept. Furthermore, you argument is complete crap to begin with because in this day and age, you can buy songs by themselves. So, stealing songs and using that justification makes them even more scummy and dirty.

Re:Dont forget

[hankdmoose]

*sigh* Christ you're thick...

I think you missed the boat completely...

No, it clearly wasn't ME who missed the point. Let me explain this to you in full detail... with proper equipment, you can blow up a photograph of a painting to the point where it is a near-perfect representation of the original. This is just like an mp3... it's not a PERFECT copy, because the mpeg standard is a lossy compression. That means some of the quality is lost. Hence, my example is valid.

On the other hand, taking a photo of a CD is the equivalent of taking an audio recording of a painting. The artwork itself is in no way, shape, or form duplicated. Thus, your "point," isn't.

Walk into a store and walk out with something you didn't pay for and argue with the store manager and police.

Again you show your ass. The point wasn't that it's not theft if you steal a TV from a store. The point was that it is just as much a theft if you steal my TV from my living room. Go ahead and try it. And after losing your kneecaps to my baseball bat (I swear, officer, he was reaching for a weapon!), try explaining to the police how, it's not theft because, after all, you weren't expected to PAY for it! I think it's YOU who's foolish. I wouldn't go so far as to say funny, tho.

The result of stealing CD's means that the RIAA has to put more filler crap onto CD's so that they can sell more CD's to make up for the profits that you've stolen.

But the thing is, if they fill the CD's with MORE filler crap, they're going to sell FEWER CD's. If you think that is a valid business model, you're as ignorant as the record execs are.

Once upon a time, an artist made money by performing their art. There was no way to reproduce that sound for the consumers. So there was no profit to be had by it. Modern case in point: Among the biggest opponents of file sharing is Metallica. Ironically enough, they wouldn't be where they are today were it not for music piracy. They started out as a no-name band, but as bootleg tapes of their SHOWS spread, more people started going to their SHOWS. People weren't buying their albums, but still, Metallica managed to make it pretty well. All thanks (in the beginning, at least) to music piracy.

Now, the artists make an inordinate amount of money by performing their art once. I wish I could get paid for 15 years for doing MY job once...

Well, I don't buy CD's, so the answer is simple.

Well aren't you special, then?

you could only buy the songs that you like an save some money at the same time.

So you want me to pay $8 for 2 songs vs. $15 for a whole CD? This to you is a savings? "But you get the album-verision, the radio-edit, the live version, and a remixed version, plus the video all on that CD-single!" Whoopdie-fuckin'-doo! How 'bout you just give me the album-version (un-edited, please) and charge me $1. Maybe then I'd think about it. And what if I decide I like the whole album at a later date? If I buy the album, do I get my money back from the singles? you bet I don't!

That's complete BS! If you want to be civil disobedient, protest. Just because you are being disobedient, does not justify ripping off the artist nor stealing his works.

Does it hurt to be so stupid? Civil disobedience is not protest. Civil disobedience involves, by very definition, breaking the law. Simply standing outside Virgin records with a sign is not being civilly disobedient (notice the use of the adverb there). And it sure as hell isn't going to bring about any changes in the world.

Want to do something that actually makes sense, stop buying their friggen music!

And I thought that was the problem! Silly me! People download music, so they're not buying it. How is this any different from just not buying it? (yeah, I know... because I'm stealing... even tho no tangible goods are arriving in my possession in the proces

Re:Dont forget

[Roydd McWilson]

What about production costs for the music? The standard practice is to charge these against an advance payment to the artist -- still a loss to the publisher if they don't sell enough copies to cover the advance.

It's not something we can ever get hard numbers on

[stev3]

I'm sure you know ever really getting hard numbers on piracy is impossible just because the nature of the industry and who would really buy something if they couldn't get it for free.

Honestly the responce to it? I think they should embrace and encourage, maybe give a biz model similar to what Napster was pushing for. A distributed model (sign the music so you know it isn't tampered with) that will is a premium up and above the free realm stuff like kazaa. That way people still get their free stuff, the music companies get a shit load of revenue without much effort on their part and everyone is a little happy.

Of course they want to have absolute power over their product, think of the profit that could be made if they could control it no matter what. Or if they could do a pay to play model(pay per view), or if they could figure out a way to pull a microsoft in that they have a limited seat license that only one or 2, etc people could watch that copy of the movie at one time. That is a gold mine in their eyes and will be what they go for. Is it right...? No, but do they want it? Yes.

Piracy, P2P, and etc are just the latest buzz words for them to try and get what they can. Remember a couple of years ago how piracy was akin to supporting terroism, it is just getting more attention from you and I because it is now in a field that is affecting us more as techies.

RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

If they included more DVDs with albums I might not mind buying them. It's a shame really as they realize that no one wants to pay for what they can easily get for free. People pay for content and they give us crap!

Re:RIAA

[smoondog]

Hmm, have you been watching Rumsfeld lately?

1900s called, they want your business model back..

[LostCluster]

Sales are down for the RIAA... they're considering a CD sold at the point when they get paid for it, the point that it lands in the warehouse of a store chain, not the point at which it lands in a consumer's hands which is where Soundscan sets up its counting points.

The fact that store shelves are holding less in inventory is bad for them, but isn't exactly a sign of piracy, just a sign that the RIAA's business model is becoming dated.

I'm pretty sure that the major chains such as Wal-Mart and Best Buy would love to have a small CD factory in the back of each store in which they could print the discs and surrounding paperwork on a just-in-time basis. Afterall, both the music and liner notes could be available to the store over a digital network. Why ship physical packages that might not sell when you can just ship blank disks and figure out what to put on them later?

Bottom line, it's going to get worse for the RIAA. They profit from the wastes in the system, and the system just keeps getting better at not buying things that can't be sold to consumers...

I don't think it matters

[Frizzle Fry]

If they have the moral and legal right to seek action against people who pirate music in the case where piracy is costing them lots of sales, then they have that same right in the case where it doesn't hurt them much or at all (or even helps them). Whether you have the right to copy music should not be decided based on how it affects the profits of the companies who make it. Either it belongs to them and these restrictions are permissible, or they are not.

Re:I don't think it matters

[gravyfaucet]

You're correct. But, the RIAA and MPAA are trying to sway the minds of legislatures, judges, etc towards their way of thinking. By showing these "big" revenue losses, they hope to convince officials that the problem is real, and worth the effort/cost of enforcement.

Re:I don't think it matters

[MBCook]

That's true. The problem is that using their numbers, they are lobbying congress to take consumers rights away and make the penalties for "casual piracy" (a few songs, as opposed to running a pirating ring where you copy and sell 1000s of discs) rediculous. They are also trying to do things like extend copyrights and such, which can easily negativly effect consumers.

They have the right to fight piracy. They DON'T have the right to use wildly missleading numbers to convince the government to help them prop up their failing business model.

Re:I don't think it matters

[dasdrewid]

They do have the moral right to protect their property, intellectual or not.

They do NOT have the right to lie and/or give misleading information to support their claims of piracy. That's called "fraud." It's illegal.

This article has nothing to do with them protecting their property. They can go after pirates all they want. But what about dealing with the iTunes Music Store? The RIAA was hesitant going in because they didn't think iTMS had enough "protection" on their files. They still bitch and moan about it all the time, saying that things like downloadable music and non-protected cds (read: cds that don't break my computer if it doesn't have Palladium or whatever) create piracy and that that hurts their sales.

They can't prove that iTMS etc. promote piracy (though, maybe they can prove it for Napster et al), so instead, they try to prove this:

Step 1: Downloadable Music
Step 2: ???
Step 3: (Loss of) Profit!

Well, problem is, they've always said "loss of sales," not loss of "profit." We just *assumed* that when they said loss of sales, they meant loss of profit. However, they misled us. They misled business leaders. And they misled the government when they tried getting stricter laws for prosecuting copyright infringers (some old /. article, I'm to lazy to find it now).

It would be like Microsoft telling us that because of piracy on the internet, they've sold a few less products, so therefore the government should nationalize all internet traffic, and let Microsoft regulate it. However, they failed to mention that by "selling less products," they mean, they sold less cardboard boxes containing a Windows cd and some papers from a store, meanwhile, sales by buying it online from the Microsoft website and downloading straight to the computer have doubled.

This is not about protecting property rights. We have the right to protect property rights, that's why they're called property *rights*. We, and especially not companies, corporations, conglomerates, organizations, and associations, do NOT have the right to lie, cheat, and scam the people around us to get what we want. I would have modded your comment "Offtopic," but it irked me just a wee-bit too much to let it slide.

Re:I don't think it matters

[CrowScape]

They do NOT have the right to lie and/or give misleading information to support their claims of piracy. That's called "fraud." It's illegal.

I so wish this was true, as I have a list of politicians I'd like to charge...

Re:I don't think it matters

[puppet10]

Well they have the right to use whatever misleading numbers they want. However, 'our' representatives should be questioning the data they are brought and not just swallowing it hook, line and sinker - but I bet a fat campaign contribution makes it go down a bit easier.

Re:I don't think it matters

[pavon]

They have the right to fight piracy. They DON'T have the right to use wildly missleading numbers to convince the government to help them prop up their failing business model.

Exactly. They have been using these numbers to scare government officials into thinking that if they don't take away our rights, the music and movie industries will collapse. The results of this include:

The DCMA
This law makes it illegal to decrypt copywritten files, possibly even illegal to create and discuss decryption methods, if they can be used for piracy. It is dangerous because it is written in a way that says all decryption is illegal except these few vague exceptions, rather than the tradional method of stating everything is legal except these exact items. One effect of this is that many things which were once considered fair-use are now illegal. Another effect is that many industries have attempted to use the law to create proprietary lock-in to thier product, hurting competitive markets.

The Broadcast bit.
The FCC has regulated that all televisions produced after a certain date, have digital recievers which respect a broadcast bit preventing one from copying that data. Again, many types of copying that were once considered fair use, will now be illegal to to the DCMA and enforced by your equipment. This will raise the cost of consumer devices, take away your rights, and make it more difficult to produce your own content (ie camcorder).

Excessive internet radio fees.
Which make it economically impossible for anyone but big business to broadcast radio over the internet legaly. Even if you are not broadcasting any RIAA music, it is your resposibility to provide complete documentation of this - ie guilty until proven innocent, so even that is impractical.

All of these hurt citizens of this country, do not benefit the artists, and create an unfair advantage for the existing large media companies.

Re:I don't think it matters

[RedWizzard]

Well they have the right to use whatever misleading numbers they want.

Um, no they don't. It's called fraud.

Re:I don't think it matters

[Roydd McWilson]

Actually, the main argument is not what your rights are under the law right now -- that is clear. The problem arises when the RIAA tries to use their data to argue to lawmakers that the current laws aren't working for their intended purpose, and hence should be revised to help the poor little musicians get back on their feet.

Re:I don't think it matters

[puppet10]

only if they use them to defraud people - using them to try to argue their point is their right, just as its everyone elses right to tell them their numbers are a complete farce and they have their heads up their arse.

Re:I don't think it matters

[RedWizzard]

Fraud: a deception deliberately practiced in order to secure unfair or unlawful gain.

If you don't think that losing the fair use rights you've had in the past is unfair, then fine. If they knowingly deceive congresscritters to get the laws "adjusted" in their favour it's fraud. It may not be possible to prosecute them for it, but it's certainly not their right to commit it.

Re:I don't think it matters

[PMuse]

Well they have the right to use whatever misleading numbers they want.
Um, no they don't. It's called fraud.
People are free to try to deceive me by half-truths. I am free to distrust them, ridicule them, deride them, refuse them my assistance, and to work to convince others (friends, congressmen, etc.) to do the same.

Re:I don't think it matters

[Kiryat Malachi]

It's DMCA. Not DCMA.

Other than that, well said.

Re:I don't think it matters

[Fissure_FS2]

Um, no they don't. It's called fraud.

And you're expecting them to be deterred by this... why?

Funny numbers?!?!

[magarity]

the RIAA is not reporting the most 'useful' numbers to the public."

OMG! Someone is using statistics to slant an issue their way! OMG!

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

All statistics are made up anyways, 3 out of 4 people know that.

Brownie points to the person who can identify that quote.

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

I know it's Homer, I think he was talking to Kent Brockman.

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[dickiedoodles]

All statistics are made up anyways, 3 out of 4 people know that.

Brownie points to the person who can identify that quote.

You said it, ten years from now

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Homer Simpson, and you mis-quoted him.

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[Mastadex]

3/4 Statistics are fake. the other 1/4 are the ones that are real because thier in our favour :)

My GOD....my sig is HUGE!

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[psy]

Another quote on that.

There are lies, damned lies and then there are statistics

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[thelenm]

It's from Slashdot comment #9146854.

Re:Funny numbers?!?!

[MisterMoney]

"All statistics are made up anyways, 3 out of 4 people know that."

i believe that's from a simpsons episode -

i will go so far as to guess it was from the episode that had homer starting the neighborhood watch/gang and it was a response from homer to a question in an interview by kent brockman....

do i get the brownie points??

Well it makes since if you factor in....

[3seas]

... they have to hide the money they are keeping (stealing) from the artists somehow...

Re:Well it makes since if you factor in....

[BlueStrat]

" ... they have to hide the money they are keeping (stealing) from the artists somehow..."

Actually, they'd just be expanding on this buisiness model. Here's an excellent example of how they ALREADY rip off the poor slobs that they convince to sign, written by a music industry insider. http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

What else is new?

[chrispyman]

It's a very common practice in many industries to "tilt" the facts to their favor. Look at the hard drive industry and tell me why my 80GB drive ends up being a 74.5GB drive when I format it.

Re:What else is new?

[stev3]

The short answer to there's two different measurement formats used. Decimal (GB) and binary (GiB) formats. Binary is used by Windows and decimal is used by the manufacturers. Both the manufacturer and Windows are giving you the "correct" number.

Binary numbers are numbers that are a power of 2. Decimal numbers are numbers that are a power of 10.

2^10 is 1,024 the closest Decimal number is 10^3 or 1,000 2^20 is 1,048,576 The closest Decimal number is 10^6 or 1,000,000 2^30 is 1,073,741,824 The closest Decimal number is 10^9 or 1,000,000,000

Now lets look at common terms: Kilo means 1 thousand Mega means 1 million Giga means 1 billion Tera means 1 Trillion

1000/1024 = .9765625 1,000,000/1,048,576 = .9536743 1,000,000,000/1,073,741,824 = .93132257

Noticing a trend yet?

At the Kilobyte size the difference is about 2.34% While at the Gigabyte stage the difference is 6.86% Since we're living in the day where it's relatively easy to put a full terrabyte of storage in your computer that "close enough" is becoming further and further from "close enough" At the Terrabyte level the difference is getting very close to 10%

Would you want to buy a hard drive that is labeled as 2^35 byte hard drive? Or would you rather see a 500Gb drive? I don't want anybody ever having to pull out a calculator to figure out how big their hard drive is!

Windows is the one reporting things wrong! Not your manufacturer. Windows does the binary calculations and then displays GB next to it. When GB is technically wrong due to it's definition. What it is actually displaying is the GiB size.

Since the GB number will always be so much higher than the GiB number it's a safe bet to assume that the hard drive manufacturers won't convert to using the GiB format. Memory manufacturers on the other hand are doing things right. You don't see then selling 1Gb of RAM as 1,073Mb do ya? It gets VERY confusing in the hardware world due to some people using 1 standard while they other group using the other one.

Re:What else is new?

[phalse phace]

"Look at the hard drive industry and tell me why my 80GB drive ends up being a 74.5GB drive when I format it."

That's because whenever a HDD is listed in GB's, it is using the calculation of 1,000MB = 1GB. The reality is that 1024MB = 1GB. That's why your 80GB HDD is 74.5GB when formatted.

In other words, 1,024KB = 1,048,576MB = 1,073,741,824GB. But the hard drive manufacturers use a simplified calculation and assume that 1,000KB = 1,000,000MB = 1,000,000,000GB which is completely wrong.

Re:What else is new?

[jonastullus]

It's a very common practice in many industries to "tilt" the facts to their favor. Look at the hard drive industry and tell me why my 80GB drive ends up being a 74.5GB drive when I format it.

i do actually hope that the above was a rhetoric question... but just for the heck of it:

Giga is defined (in almost all of science) as 10^9; therefore 80GB = 80 * 10^9 Byte.
Computer Scientists have calculated most data sizes in exponents of "2"; therefore it is common to write KB as 2^10 Byte, MB as 2^20 Byte and GB as 2^30 Byte; this is also how your operating system will output your HDD capacity.

Recently it has been tried to introduce the units Mebibyte (MiB) and Gibibyte (GiB) for the exponents of "2", but it might still take quite a while (or may never happen) that the majority of computer scientists and the industry will switch to the new notation.

thus it is (due to ill-defined units) more or less correct to write:
80GB = 80 * 2^30 Byte = 8.59 * 10^10 Byte = 86GB

obviously it should really be written as 80GiB = 86GB, but such is our beloved computer science ;-))

yet, most likely you already knew that... well, next time better put the <irony> tags *gg*

Re:What else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

The short answer to there's two different measurement formats used.

Way to miss the point, dipshit.

Re:What else is new?

[StormRider01]

Marketing Weenies.

Re:What else is new?

[BlacKat]

All the people below going into details on number systems are correct, the computer uses 1024 bytes to a Gig, while the HDD makers use 1000 bytes.

However, this has not always been the way it's worked... at one time the HDD makers also used 1024 until someone figured out that by using 1000 it made their drives look bigger.

There is no other reason I can think of why they would make such a switch. I mean, why the hell would you want to sell a product that claims to be one thing, but when it's actually used is another?!

You try explaining the whole "Gigabyte vs. Gibibyte" thing to someone who isn't computer literate and watch their eyes glaze over while they wonder why their new 80 Gig drive really isn't.

Personally, I think the HDD makers should be forced to list their drive sizes as they will be reported by the devices they're plugged into, otherwise isn't it misleading?!

Re:What else is new?

[TeraCo]

Obviously, that's why a gigalitre of water is 1024 litres.. and a gigawatt is 1024 watts.. :P

Re:What else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

things you can do as a consument:

1. go to concerts... few reasons... first of all you wanna see if the band can really play...

2. buy your cds directly from the artist... on concerts...

3. dont listen or buy commercial shit from "artists" that have been assembled by marketing divisions.

4. dont listen to shit ;)

if you go along this 4 rules you wont support the riaa ;) unless you listen to shit of course ;)

Re:What else is new?

[mjh53]

of course, this was the industry that listed unformatted capacity. but the point of the original poster remains. they used standard nomenclature (Gb binary) and advertised using (Gb decimal) - quite deliberately. some years later the GiB idea came up.

there are of course other examples of widely understood words getting corrupted. million (10^6), billion (10^12) . oh, i mean billion (10^9) as the meaning has changed. i can remember distinct confusion when younger when people had to specify "american billion". (a popular opinion was that americans with 1000 millions wanted to be billionaires, so the word meaning was corrupted because an english billion was really hard to get to)

Re:What else is new?

[jonastullus]

in germany an "american billion" is called "milliarde" whereas the NEXT unit is called "billion". so what was the "american billion" called before, what is the next unit called and WHY create such confusion???

Re:What else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the Hard Drive manufacturers were the first people to start doing this, don't you?

The whole GiB-GB thing started from Hard Drive manufacturers trying to put less capacity on a disk, but give it a nice, round, inflated capacity on the label.

So by perpetuating the monstrosity that is decimal gigabytes, you help hard drive manufacturers swindle innocent buyers.

(If I had my way, people who actually use decimal gigabytes, or label things "GiB" would be put on the B ark)

Re:What else is new?

[Anonymous Coward]

A computer is a binary, not decimal, system. It translates to decimal purely for the user's benefit.

Besides which, show me a bit - it's a concept, not an object.

Re:What else is new?

[TeraCo]

I'll show you a bit when you show me a watt :)

How Exactly is That Different

[Greyfox]

From all those companies lying about their revenue during the height of the stock market bubble/scam? Are the numbers the RIAA is reporting to us any better than the numbers Enron or Tyco reported to us?

Re:How Exactly is That Different

[LostCluster]

From all those companies lying about their revenue during the height of the stock market bubble/scam? Are the numbers the RIAA is reporting to us any better than the numbers Enron or Tyco reported to us?

The RIAA's numbers are at least correct counts of what they're supposed to be representing. However, consumers are paying less for music doesn't ring too when it's the wholesale transactions going down but not the number of retail transations. That just says there's less CDs sitting unsold on shelves these days...

Re:How Exactly is That Different

[fermion]

The intersting thing is that Enron and Tyco may have reported proper numbers. At least in Enrons case the accounting firm got in trouble for not following procedure not for any specific accounting problems.

The problem was that they the numbers reported were carefully crafted as to hide the reality of the health of the company. This was fine until the markets realized that certain assumptions about the meaning of the numbers were incorrect.

This is the problem with the RIAA numbers. They may be perfectly open about the numbers. Even though they may not be actively creating a false reality, the day may come when the markets realize the numbers are none the less presented to mislead.

Re:How Exactly is That Different

[Secrity]

There are specific laws against reporting the bogus numbers that the Enron and Tyco folks reported. There are no specific laws against reporting the bogus numbers that the RIAA are reporting. I think that a bigger problem with the RIAA is that it may be skirting laws that prevent collusion between "competing" companies. Yeah, the RIAA could be doing something illegal or fraudulant, but who has both the desire and the resources to pick a fight with the RIAA?

We don't care about your stat...

[LostCluster]

Soundscan would also count an "unsigned artist's" CD just the same as any other because it went through the cash register... but the RIAA's stat doesn't include CDs sold by companies that aren't members of their group.

The RIAA represents most of the recording industry, but not all of it. Sales going down for the RIAA members does not always equate to sales going down for the industry...

You've got to make sure you know what a stat was really counting before you make conclusions based on it.

Re:We don't care about your stat...

[phalse phace]

"The RIAA represents most of the recording industry, but not all of it. Sales going down for the RIAA members does not always equate to sales going down for the industry..."

I agree. The way the RIAA calculates sales, by the "number of units shipped to retail outlets," is very flawed. I'm sure all those purchases I've made through emusic, the iTunes Music Store, DMusic, and CD Baby haven't been included into their [RIAA] numbers.

This leads me to believe that music sales are actually up worldwide. Until *all* music sales are calculated (from digital downloads and independent/non-RIAA CDs to RIAA member CDs), I don't think we'll really know for sure what the sales numbers are like.

Re:We don't care about your stat...

[Tired and Emotional]

That's the crux of the matter.

The fact is that the RIAA members had a near monopoly on the means of distribution until the last few (perhaps as few as 2) years. What is really going on is musicians are taking back control of distribution. Just about every established band in my town has a cd. You can buy them at shows, or from web sites like CD BABY, or even from independent record stores run by people who care about music and musicians rather than just shoveling product.

This is good for musicians but more importantly its important for listeners because as a result a lot of styles, both historical and regional, can once again be heard.

But the RIAA is in trouble because their business model is no longer valid - that business model was to extract monopoly rents (to use the economists jargon) from the distribution system.

Given that their technology based initiatives will be useless against organized piracy who already operate outside the law one can only assume their real objective is to regain monopoly control of the distribution channel. To do that they would have to mandate equipment that could only play media licensed by their members, and I don't think anything passed so far is that draconian.

Re:We don't care about your stat...

[jorlando]

a fair accounting of sales would lead to more royalties paid to artists. *AA doesn't want that kind of accuracy...

Re:We don't care about your stat...

[PetWolverine]

To do that they would have to mandate equipment that could only play media licensed by their members, and I don't think anything passed so far is that draconian.

Don't give Sony any ideas -- think of Sony Music and the MiniDisc.

Or Microsoft. They could just buy a record album or five, and all major music would be Microsoft-branded--and come in WMA format only.

Reminds me..

[fiannaFailMan]

..of the people who are complaining to Congress about the cost of 'frivolous' lawsuits whilst buttering up their shareholders in their annual reports about how the cost of litigation 'will not have a significant impact on the bottom line.'

The bottom line is that anything big businessmen have to say should be taken with a pinch of salt.

It's called "Just in Time" Inventory

[Newer Guy]

in the past, the RIAA always shipped considerably more units than were sold. Why the change? Retails stores simply want less inventory, so they order less, even though they are selling more.

This trend is commonplace everywhere. Retail outlets don't want things sitting on their shelves for two reasons: First, because they have to PAY for them and second if they don't sell, they have to PAY to ship them back.

What the record stores are doing has been done for years in most other retail outlets. It's called "Just in Time" inventory. For example, a grocery store tries to predict how much lettuce they'll sell and only buys that much, lest they get stuck with rotting produce. McDonald's made a science of this back in the '90's.

Now, the RIAA wants to use this new inventory trend to SPREAD THEIR LIES! It shows just how dirty rotten to the core they are! They KNOW what's going on; they're cherry picking stastics to LIE!!

Re:It's called "Just in Time" Inventory

[LostCluster]

In the 90s, Wal-Mart passed K-Mart in part because Wal-Mart had a much smarter way of allocating inventory.

Wal-Mart came up with advanced ways of predicting what would sell, and shiping that to stores without anybody at the store having to make a request. K-Mart, stuck with the old fashioned way of having managers estimate what their stores needed and ordering that.

Clearly, a prediction formula will beat a single human's estimates over long term trials... and that's exactly what happened. K-Mart kept getting stuck with the wrong products in stores.

Afterall, a Blue Light Special was a short-term clearance declared by a manager when they had far more inventory on an item than they wanted to have...

Re:It's called "Just in Time" Inventory

[Sycraft-fu]

Computers and the Internet have also made it feasable for this to work for most companies too, when it wasn't always. It allows highly accurate tracking of inventory through the whole chain, and quick ordering. The better you know what you have, and how fast it leaves, and the quicker you can get it replaced, the less you need to have on hand. Even small companies can, and are, doing this. You see it plenty in the computer parts world where deprecation is around 1%/week.

So technology improves, supply chain gets more efficient... And the RIAA claims that lowers sales. Riiiiight.

Re:It's called "Just in Time" Inventory

[Anonymous Coward]

McDonald's made a science of this back in the '90's.

Ahhh, actually it was the Japanese who pioneered this inventory model. It's what they used to kick the crap out of the US electronics and auto industries. It was in use in Japan, LONG before the golden arches ever heard of it. I know, because when I studied it in the 80's, it was already well established, and proven in Japan.

Magic...

[softspokenrevolution]

Apparently, people who deny that magic is real haven't looked at statistics. After all with statistics and polls you can take information that you want to see and conjure up some arcane formulation that will make it look as if that information is in fact the truth.

If we follow this vein, there are many other forms of magic, such as economics. Following this even further, we can point out the evil warlocks of the world, those who practice their economics and statistics steeped in their own lies.

I'm sorry, it's Thursday night.

Re:Magic...

[chaos421]

i'm with this guy. this story reminds me of the first day of statistics 101. my professor used to bring in a different statistic each day and explain how it could be fudged/misconstrued/etc to prove either side.

In related news...

[k4_pacific]

The US census is now counting every possible sperm-egg combination as a "potential" citizen.

Re:In related news...

[ThatsNotFunny]

In that case, my left hand is guilty of mass murder...

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Every sperm is sacred....

just ask $ObFilm, Catholics, Republicans,....

Re:In related news...

[machine of god]

Fine so long as I can claim the dependants.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And Hi-Five for another lefty, uh, hi-five with the right hand...

Re:In related news...

[sik0fewl]

... not to mention mass turbation.

Re:In related news...

[Ateryx]

ThatsNotFunny...seriously.

God forbid the day I'm ever not so easily amused/entertained.

Re:In related news...

[drinkypoo]

It's hard being a dick, he's either hanging around unemployed, being jerked off, pissed off, or getting fucked. His closest neighbor is an asshole and he has two dependents who are both nuts.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

And that .........

is funny.

thank you for causing me to spew beer all over my desktop.

needed a new key board anyway

(cmog)

Re:In related news...

[luke923]

Well, if we learned anything from Monty Python, it's that: There are Jews in the world. There are Buddhists. There are Hindus and Mormons, and then There are those that follow Mohammed, but I've never been one of them. I'm a Roman Catholic, And have been since before I was born, And the one thing they say about Catholics is: They'll take you as soon as you're warm. You don't have to be a six-footer. You don't have to have a great brain. You don't have to have any clothes on. You're A Catholic the moment Dad came, Because... ...Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate. Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite irate. Let the heathen spill theirs On the dusty ground. God shall make them pay for Each sperm that can't be found. Every sperm is wanted. Every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed In your neighbourhood. Hindu, Taoist, Mormon, Spill theirs just anywhere, But God loves those who treat their Semen with more care. Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted,... ...God gets quite irate. Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed... ...In your neighbourhood! Every sperm is useful. Every sperm is fine. God needs everybody's. Mine! And mine! And mine! Let the Pagan spill theirs O'er mountain, hill, and plain. God shall strike them down for Each sperm that's spilt in vain. Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is good. Every sperm is needed In your neighbourhood. Every sperm is sacred. Every sperm is great. If a sperm is wasted, God gets quite iraaaaate! Actually, I'm more Protestant, and - as a member "of the Protestant Reformed Church, which successfully challenged the autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century, we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue." "...and, by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller, I could insure... that, when I came off, (someone) would not be impregnated." After all, "...That's what being a Protestant's all about. That's why it's the church for me. That's why it's the church for anyone who respects the individual and the individual's right to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his protest up to the church door in fifteen-seventeen, he may not have realised the full significance of what he was doing, but four hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear whatever I want on my John Thomas,... [sniff] ...and, Protestantism doesn't stop at the simple condom! Oh, no! I can wear French Ticklers if I want....French Ticklers. Black Mambos. Crocodile Ribs. Sheaths that are designed not only to protect, but also to enhance the stimulation of sexual congress....I can go down the road any time I want and walk into Harry's and hold my head up high and say in a loud, steady voice, 'Harry, I want you to sell me a condom. In fact, today, I think I'll have a French Tickler, for I am a Protestant.'" But, I digress. Monty Python is great.

Re:In related news...

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the term is spermicide.

Re:In related news...

[rozz]

In that case, my left hand is guilty of mass murder...

and of course, your Right hand claims it knows nothing about it

Re:In related news...

[__aamkky7574]

To quote Bill Hicks:

You know what that means? That means I have wiped entire civilizations off my chest with a gray gym sock. I've tossed universes in my underpants. While napping. That is special.

P.

Re:In related news...

[Robmonster]

This is a topic that is open to mass debate.

Re:In related news...

[maximilln]

Potential taxpayer?

So _that's_ how the administration managed to get a budget surplus. They ran the projected numbers for the next 100 years and then interpolated back to the present using a simple average.

If every sperm-egg combo produces a taxpayer, in 100 years we'll have a few kazillion taxpayers, making tax revenue per year a few bazillion dollars. Divide by 100 and that means that next year's projected tax revenue is [much more than what it really is].

That's how the dot-com boom was created, wasn't it? Potential customers? Projected sales?

Gah... I'd quit being bitter if I got laid.

Re:In related news...

[Black Jack Hyde]

Monty Python is great.

Um, so's the occasional Paragraph tag. Line spacing is your friend.

using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[jbellis]

just don't use it to justify theft... if the RIAA charges more than you want to pay, that doesn't mean you get to take it anyway. Check out emusic or other sources of indie music instead.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[dsanfte]

if the RIAA charges more than you want to pay, that doesn't mean you get to take it anyway.

First, it's not theft, it's copyright infringement.

Second, if a person can't afford to buy something, they're not morally obligated to thrash themselves with the spiked whip of capitalist ethics. They hurt no one by doing so.

Strict adherance to law is simply strict adherance to politicians. They're the ones who make it.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

All equivocation aside, the word is theft. Those that argue merely show that they have a conscience to salve.

If a person can't afford to buy something - tough shit. They could make efforts to get the law changed you know, which would be the positive, useful action. Taking something anyway is just laziness.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[lawpoop]

Once again.

Copyright infringement is not theft.

If you believe it is, fine. However, you disagree with the American justice system, and a long tradition of anglo-saxon jurisprudence. Theft is depriving someone of something. If you copy someone's song when you have no right to do so, they still have their song. What you've done is infringe on their rights to copies of that song.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[jx100]

..because some singer actually loses somethnig every time someone copies a song...

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[scotch]

I don't download music, I like the shiny CDs I buy from a multitude of places. And no, copyright infringement isn't theft, ass face.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[DragonMagic]

How is this insightful?

If a person can't afford to buy something, they're not morally obligated by ethics? Excuse me?

So a homeless man who can't afford to pay a cab driver can just go ahead and make the cabbie drive him somewhere, because he's not morally obligated to pay for it?

Oh, wait, the gas and the driver's time cost money. Well, guess what? Recording, engineering, writing music costs money, as does filming and producing movies and television shows. Don't they deserve to make money from their efforts?

No, I guess you'd think they should assume people can take whatever they want because "it hurts no one". Neverminding that it's JUST ENTERTAINMENT and no one is entitled to the right to be entertained by others for free.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Qzukk]

Silly boy, don't you realize that the RIAA's members take all that out of the artist's hide? thats why unless you're a megastar, you can never break even on your recording contract. If you sold a million CDs, thats because they spent $10 million promoting you. If you sold 10 million CDs, thats because they spent $100 million. Or so they say, anyway. I'm sure they've got enough people in the right places to make sure all those millions get spent, somehow. Possibly on nice mansions for the CEO to stay in?

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[thryllkill]

I used to love emusic. But between their ever dwindling catalogue, and the dowload limits they placed on their users I felt it necessary to say goodbye to them. Personally I have found, for indie music, audiolunchbox.com to be a better place.

I'll agree if you say I pay more when I download from then then when I did from emusic, but then I point you back to my first point. Labels and such are abandoning emusic. The why does not matter to me (whether it be for more profits from a place like audiolunchbox, or because emusic sucks) I just know that I find more of what I want there, then I did in the weeks leading up to emusic's policy change.

Oh, and for you ogg freaks, audiolunchbox.com offers ogg format too. They also offer scans of the cd covers at a high enough resolution to make printing viable.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Roydd McWilson]

If you can't afford to buy a copy of some (probably pretty bad) music, I think you are morally obligated to respect the creators' wish not to obtain it via other means. In this case, it has nothing to do with obeying politicians; basic copyright law just happens to be the most reasonable idea. After all, it's not like you need this music to save your life (this issue with patented medications is a bit trickier; some countries, like India, choose to simply ignore those patents). Anyway, the main reason so many people illegally download music is convenience -- not because they can't afford it.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

"So a homeless man who can't afford to pay a cab driver can just go ahead and make the cabbie drive him somewhere"

You do realize that copyright infrindgement is something much different then the actual theft of objects? Your analogy thus is NOT apt.

If someone who would never purchase a piece of information, since they could not afford it, copies it then there are NO losers.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

"Once again you boss giving you a paycheck that bounces is NOT THEFT"

Go away troll, but I will bite just this once to explain it to the truly ignorant:

Money and the objects it buys are tangable. Copying of information is something apart.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

If a person can't afford to buy something, they're not morally obligated by ethics? Excuse me?

If someone can't afford their own yacht, so they build a replica of mine from pictures taken with a zoom lense, they aren't just copyright infringers, they're thieves. If nanotechnology ever comes of age, and they can't afford to license my bread recipe, they shouldn't hack some nanobots to make some anyway, even if they're starving.

So a homeless man who can't afford to pay a cab driver can just go ahead and...

Walk home? Hell no, that's stealing from the cabbie. If he had taken the cab home, he would have had to pay, so by not paying, he is stealing. Cabbies have (or at least should) have the state-granted monopoly of moving people, and to try and cheat the system is immoral.

Don't they deserve to make money from their efforts?

Yes, I find it not only sad, but unfair that they're all 100% bankrupt. Those A list actors I saw pandhandling drove it all home, but when I heard that Snoop Dog was having to sell his kidney just so his kid would have food on the table, I broke down in tears. Won't someone please think of poor old Geffen, living in a cardboard box, and wearing that burlap rag? Please, think of the starving millionaires.

Neverminding that it's JUST ENTERTAINMENT

Yes, of course. It has long been proven fact, that human beings are truly only robots, having no pschology to speak of. Like you, I've heard all the myths regarding the idea that a human being in emotional isolation, with no entertainment at all would slowly go mad. No TV, no books, no music or art, and the stress and boredom build up, until they lose all touch with reality, going stark raving bonkers. But science has proven that prison inmates in "the hole" find the monotony peaceful and even enjoyable. Which brings me back to entertainment, what is it good for? Why, making money of course. And when you steal entertainment, it makes no money, which is sinful. Soon enough though, people will have withholdings taken out of their paychecks, to be directly given to the RIAA/MPAA. Then, we will be able to do away with the inefficient entertainment part of "making money". Won't that be a glorious day?

END SARCASM

Your attitude wouldn't be nearly so obnoxious, if the subhumans you were apologizing for didn't try so hard to murder every single bit of free entertainment there used to be. How long til they actively start lobbying against it? With software, we already see the "free/open software threatens the livelyhood's of programmers!" bullshit, and that being true (god, that was hard to type, even as a "for the sake of the argument"), does not the guy that puts up a free novel on the web not steal from those trying to sell theirs? If I play the guitar on my front lawn, am I not robbing poor little Britney Spears?

You arguments are old and tired, and have nothing to do with logic. If they want to be artists, fine, you'd think they'd be flattered so many want their "art". But no one said that they had a god-given right to make a job of it, or that they have any say in how I arrange bits on my hard drive. That they could make a living out of it, for a few decades, that doesn't make it any more profound or righteous. You will never understand why things are the way they are though. I might as well be mashing the keys for all the sense this will make to you. For now, that is sad. But your attitude is ultimately dangerous, so don't be suprised when someday someone deals with that attitude in an extreme way.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[FLEB]

You're right. It's not theft. A more proper analogy would be that of hiring someone without paying them.

This is a better thing... how?

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[FLEB]

"Money and the objects it buys are tangable [sic]."
--

See a movie.
Go to a concert.
Get a car repair (excluding "parts" cost).
Go to an amusement park.
Go to a doctor's office.

What there is tangible? Try doing it with no money in your pocket, though, and you'll be booted as soon as you're caught.

The only difference between a concert and a recording is that the recording is time-shifting the work from its original time and location. If you're not paying for the recording, it's tantamount to hiring without pay.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not Redundant! Honest! I'm just a slow typist!

-- FLEB

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[cft_128]

Copyright infringement is not theft.

If you believe it is, fine. However, you disagree with the American justice system, and a long tradition of anglo-saxon jurisprudence. Theft is depriving someone of something. If you copy someone's song when you have no right to do so, they still have their song. What you've done is infringe on their rights to copies of that song.

Interesting view of theft...that then implies that identity theft is not theft. They still have their identity, it just has been infringed upon by someone else. Now I'm not saying my parent post was implying that music 'piracy' was not wrong but it give copyright infringement a different perspective. Right now people seem to view downloading a few songs or pirated video games in the same way they would view stealing Bill Gates identity.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[GileadGreene]

...if a person can't afford to buy something, they're not morally obligated to thrash themselves with the spiked whip of capitalist ethics...

Much like if a closed source software company wants your software, but can't "afford" to abide by the rules of the GPL, they're not morally obligated to thrash themselves with the spiked whip of GNU ethics.

If, like many of us, you object to the scenario I have outlined above, you will want to vigorously support copyright law. That is the root of your moral obligation - not capitalist ethics, but your own ethics. This is very much like supporting free speech: I may object to the uses that the RIAA and MPAA make of copyright law, but I will support their right to do so.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Unordained]

The sarcasm was fine. The rest wasn't.

Competition is not theft. Nothing guarantees income to those who make their services available. However, we do have laws in place to make sure that you won't get for free what the rightful owners don't want to give you for free.

An artist starving because nobody likes the music? Tough. An artist starving because some other artist is more popular and fills all the demand? Darn. An artist startving because people like the stuff, take it, but don't pay to have it?

Copyright violation isn't healthy competition between free market agents. Your analogy is flawed.

The supposed victims of copyright law shouldn't be able to ask for taxes on CD's and internet connections, because they have no guarantee of income. You shouldn't get to copy their stuff without permission, because our laws say you don't have the right to. Copyright violation is akin to rape: you take a service without permission, leaving the service more or less intact for others to take with or without permission. It's not theft (as is taking unduplicatable physical items), but it's still not right. It's a violation of established consent. (I apologize to rape victims or their relatives if this comes across as simplistic.)

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[DragonMagic]

[snipping sarcastic rebuttal]

Sorry, but you completely changed the point just to fit something unfunny. I'll bypass it for the points you attempt to make:

Your attitude wouldn't be nearly so obnoxious, if the subhumans you were apologizing for didn't try so hard to murder every single bit of free entertainment there used to be.

How's this? I'm not apologizing for anyone, nor supporting the actions of the RIAA/MPAA. I'm against anyone who thinks that if they can't afford something, then they're perfectly allowed to steal it. Steal, as in, not pay for something which can only legally be obtained by paying.

You can't afford Windows XP Pro, but hate Windows XP Home, so you should be allowed to pirate it because it's too high a price. Same with Photoshop and Acrobat Writer.

No one's being hurt, after all, since you couldn't afford them anyways.

Except, well, you're gaining something from their use and taking away a profit from those who created it. There are free alternatives to nearly every software package out there, so why not use them? If they don't meet your needs, lower your needs or raise your disposable income.

For music and movies, there are free alternatives. Nick Park released one of his ten mini-films for free on his website. Many big bands have free music on their websites. There are concerts you should be able to find in your area which have little to no charge to attend.

So, again, how on earth are the RIAA/MPAA killing free entertainment? Oh, yeah, they're trying to retain their monopolies and losing. So what? Help them die off by NOT listening to/watching their productions, even if you could do it for free, and support those who meet your price range or code of ethics.

How long til they actively start lobbying against it? With software, we already see the "free/open software threatens the livelyhood's of programmers!" bullshit, and that being true (god, that was hard to type, even as a "for the sake of the argument"), does not the guy that puts up a free novel on the web not steal from those trying to sell theirs?

So? Educate the opposite. Pass out free copies of software you legally can. Offer to train a person or two in how to use it so that perhaps they can show off to others, and pass along the knowledge.

But playing the "Someone else put this up for free, so we must stop it" bit is boring already. There are free novels available, and free stories, free music, free movies, free everything. As much as people hate competition and will try what they can to limit the damage competition does, supporting free alternatives helps them to grow. So please stop using this as an argument that free alternatives are dying; they won't if people like you help them out.

If I play the guitar on my front lawn, am I not robbing poor little Britney Spears?

No, and I have no idea why you bothered with this logic. It's not based on anything in my post.

You arguments are old and tired, and have nothing to do with logic. If they want to be artists, fine, you'd think they'd be flattered so many want their "art".

How does it have nothing to do with logic? The parent poster suggested that if people cannot afford a service, they are not morally obligated to pay for it, but can still receive it. Where's the logic in that? And I provided examples of how stupid it really sounds when it does not involve a geek trying to get free entertainment.

But no one said that they had a god-given right to make a job of it, or that they have any say in how I arrange bits on my hard drive. That they could make a living out of it, for a few decades, that doesn't make it any more profound or righteous.

Nor did I even imply it. However, no one has a god-given right to get services for free that are otherwise only obtainable through paying channels. Whether or not you could afford it makes no difference. You want that welfare, contact the gove

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[RoofPig]

"...and taking away a profit from those who created it"

Sorry. Wrong answer. You established in your cute little scenerio that the guy wouldn't buy it anyways, so the possible outcomes are as follows:

a) Guy doesn't buy or use software. Software company doesn't get money.

b) Guy doesn't buy but uses software. Software company doesn't get money.

Where's the missing profit? Answer: nowheresville. The simple truth is we don't need record companies anymore. They used to distribute music because no one else could really make records or tapes with any reasonable amount of quality. That's not a service anyone needs anymore. People can obtain a copy on their own. Sure you need a source and the source worked hard to create their art and everything, but so the ass what? You don't have a god given right to be a rich rock star. At most you have the government telling people they ought to not make a copy of a song because of some misguided notion that no one will want to record new and interesting songs if they don't get compensated.

The fact that the MPAA and RIAA lobby to have copyright terms extended nigh indefinitely tells you all you need to know about the purpose of modern copyright law's existence. I'll give you a clue if you still aren't sure, though. It has to do with shareholders and government officials liking money a lot. That these corporations have effectively removed the part where works are supposed to go into the public domain for society's benefit as a whole pretty much nullifies any moral ground copyright laws once had. In my eyes (and I'm sure hundreds of you will disagree) downloading songs or what have you is pretty much the only effective form of civil disobedience against these fuckholes.

Incidentally, since I began using peer to peer programs a number of years ago, I've bought around three times as many cds as I had been prior to that. Take that for what it's worth.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree that something has to be done about copyright law. It's going to piss me off if we reach a Star Trek type society and I'm like, "Computer, play some light jazz" and it goddamn debits my account $1.25. What the fuck kind of future is that?

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[dsanfte]

You must be very desperate and sick to compare downloading an mp3 to an act of sexual assault that will torment them for the rest of their lives, possibly resulting in a pregnancy that has to be aborted.

That's so rediculous that I really don't know what to say, besides that, if you're reaching for these kinds of pathetic comparisons, you may be on the losing side of the argument.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

The supposed victims of copyright law shouldn't be able to ask for taxes on CD's and internet connections

You mean like in Canada and most of Europe, where this happens?

You shouldn't get to copy their stuff without permission, because our laws say you don't have the right to.

You mean except after 28 years, or for that matter, any reasonable delay, when it becomes public domain? Oh, I mean lifetime of author (~60-80) + 75 years.

Laws don't have to say what's right. The beauty of the US Constitution is that I have many rights, that there wasn't any need to explicitly put into writing. That "our" laws, and by this, I'm using your words, not mine, say otherwise, is sad. But "our" isn't so accurate anyway, is it. Some corporate lobbyists sent a Lear jet to DC, to pick up a few congressional friends for a game of golf at a resort. You see, senators like that, because there's not that great a chance that Air Force 1 will ever be theirs. Then, the lobbyist tell them how horrible it is, that Mickey Mouse will be public domain, and they'll lose something they deserve to keep! Oh no! But the senators, high on complimentary nose candy, they're too stupid to realize, hey, only a 2 minute clip, Steamboat Willy is actually going to become public domain, because Mickey is trademarked.

And then, the really fun stuff starts. Millions of apologists like you stand up, and say "Thank god we protected Micke!" even if it means you're being stolen from. As if some korean knockoff could be any worse than the tripe Disney tosses to the public.

There exist many systems far more efficient and fair for compensating creative people. But we're not getting close to those systems, we're moving away from them. So forgive me if I roll my eyes when I see you cheerleading.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[kaiidth]

Give up on the stupid rape analogy already. It's not only simplistic, it also makes you sound monumentally tactless/stupid.

"Take a service without permission, leaving the service more or less intact for others to take with or without permission" - if you think this is in any way an adequate description of rape, you are really in trouble. Do you consider sex 'a service'?! Did you grow up with Windows NT? Do you think you can start sex with the Win32 CreateService API function? Are you implying that you regularly see bills of the 'Hand Job, Qty. 1, $#' variety? Religious enough to go for the 'God-ordained master/servant relationship to man'? Misogynous enough to speak of sex as though between animals? Or are you merely somewhat cynically suggesting that all forms of physical affection are work done as a form of employment, and that rape is a crime merely because the attacker witholds the cash/barter?

Aside from the above, rape is a close-contact crime. If it were the case that the process of copyright violation required one to tie up the artist(s), rip their clothes off and shove CDs where the sun does not shine, then perhaps you might have a point that the two were analogous. Both would then involve pain, humiliation, helplessness, violation and potentially serious physical and psychological ramifications. Since this is manifestly not the case, I suggest to you that you should either update your choice of analogy (to, perhaps, having your paycheck unfairly docked because somebody stole your paperclips) or simply leave the sensationalism out entirely. You clearly knew that it was a dodgy analogy before you made it - so why bother?

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[scotch]

Same as speeding on the highways.

Same as raping a woman is theft.

Same as trespassing on private property is theft.

Same as killing another is theft.

Same as slandering another is theft.

Same as punching an Anonymous Coward in the throat is theft.

Welcome to 1984.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[mdwh2]

Aside from the fact that rape is a little more than "taking a service without permission", I wouldn't call copying to be taking a service - that implies that the authors are still having to do some extra work in order to serve you.

If you want your analogies, it's analogous to fantasising about someone without their permission. You're gaining benefit as a result of someone else, but they aren't having to do any service as a result of that. At the very least, this should be allowed for personal use only!

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Morosoph]

Interesting view of theft...that then implies that identity theft is not theft. They still have their identity, it just has been infringed upon by someone else. Now I'm not saying my parent post was implying that music 'piracy' was not wrong but it give copyright infringement a different perspective. Right now people seem to view downloading a few songs or pirated video games in the same way they would view stealing Bill Gates identity.

You're absolutely right. Identity "theft" is not quite as bad as theft. If you could steal my identity, that would be heinous indeed! Copyright infringement is clearly a lesser crime, as true identity theft would involve murder.

It's important to realise that something can be bad for reasons other than the category that it is in. In this case, one could say "property vs identity has a 1:1000 importance ratio" and "copyright infringement vs theft has an importance ratio of 1:100" (say), so that identity infringment is still 10 times worse than ordinary theft!

The numbers here are made up, but I'm sure that you get the idea. If you think that the numbers underrate the seriousness of serious crimes, square or cube them, but allow for the fact that some identity _is_ caught up in property for most people, whether or not it "should" be: consider if your house were burgled.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Once again. Copyright infringement is not theft. . . . a long tradition of anglo-saxon jurisprudence . . .

Well said. Circumstances matter. Details matter.
Another example: Generally, intentionally killing someone is murder. But, killing a burglar in your house probably isn't murder. Nor is shooting your hunting buddy because you thought he was a deer.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[uqbar]

But to follow your analogy more correctly:

Someone hears a killer track - so they go home and write and record a tune inspired by the style of the hit record they just heard. It may not sound as good, but then, walking is slower than taking a cab, no?

There is no lack of free entertainment - lots of bands give away their MP3's for free. That most people would rather hear steal Aviril Lavigne or Blink 182 then download genuinely free tunes from a real punk band says a lot.

Make your own damn music - it's easier now than ever to make a professional sounding release, thanks to technology. But don't suggest that ripping a CD is analogous to building your own yacht. That's a horrible analogy.

Sarcasm is no defense here, you're just distorting facts like the RIAA.

Those of us who make money doing music (and who often work a couple of crap jobs so we can live while making money doing music) get tired of getting squeezed by the majors on one end and then consumers on the other.

The irony is that so many of us here on Slashdot make our money producing intangibles (like code). You'd think more of us would value folks whose work is similar in that we are just making and selling mere arrangements of bits on a hard drive.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Most people are pirating the newest song or album. Your argument would hold more water if the majority of mp3 music out there is older stuff.

They could care less about already successful artists who are pulling in money left and right for the past 20 years. It's the new ones trying to make a break who lose out to their album being pirated on a massive scale. So public domain the first week? Not on your life.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[DragonMagic]

Sorry. Wrong answer. You established in your cute little scenerio that the guy wouldn't buy it anyways, so the possible outcomes are as follows:

a) Guy doesn't buy or use software. Software company doesn't get money.

b) Guy doesn't buy but uses software. Software company doesn't get money.

Where's the missing profit? Answer: nowheresville.

And like the parent to my reply, you simply make up what I don't say. I never said there was a missing profit; I said someone takes a profit away.

However, no one should be allowed to insist that there is money missing because someone is using that software, unless that software is being resold to someone else illegally. Just a little logic I have with that.

The simple truth is we don't need record companies anymore. They used to distribute music because no one else could really make records or tapes with any reasonable amount of quality. That's not a service anyone needs anymore.

And yet, later on, you admit to buying CDs. Do you buy any from RIAA members, from those P2P services?

People can obtain a copy on their own. Sure you need a source and the source worked hard to create their art and everything, but so the ass what? You don't have a god given right to be a rich rock star. At most you have the government telling people they ought to not make a copy of a song because of some misguided notion that no one will want to record new and interesting songs if they don't get compensated.

Yeah, the people who created Unreal Tournament 2004 worked their asses off, as did the people who are working on Doom III. But hey, what right do they have to make money off their hard work? They should license those engines for free and give away free copies, because no one deserves to profit from their "art".

But wait, if we impose a limited government monopoly on distribution, these people can pay salaries of the employees who shape and beautify these games. They'd want to come back to work at a software company, rather than go find work at a textile plant.

Funny, I don't see any free versions of games that are nearly as good as Q3A or UT2K4 have been. So it seems to me that copyright helps produce really quality first-person shooters.

Same with music. People choose whether they want to release it for free or charge for distribution of their songs. This model does work. And if you don't feel that artists should be compensated, then choose the people who agree with you. If you don't seem to enjoy their music, lower your standards or suck up the fact that what you want costs money.

Justifying piracy because no one deserves to make money from an idea is moronic.

The fact that the MPAA and RIAA lobby to have copyright terms extended nigh indefinitely tells you all you need to know about the purpose of modern copyright law's existence. I'll give you a clue if you still aren't sure, though. It has to do with shareholders and government officials liking money a lot.

How many people on Slashdot get out the pitchforks and torches the moment someone allegedly breaks a GPL? Or those who claim parts or all of Linux belong to them? After all, without current copyright laws, these would perfectly be permissable.

Seems to me that copyright laws today have also made LAMP one of the best packageable software bundles around. Would Linux be how it was today without copyright? I highly doubt it.

That these corporations have effectively removed the part where works are supposed to go into the public domain for society's benefit as a whole pretty much nullifies any moral ground copyright laws once had. In my eyes (and I'm sure hundreds of you will disagree) downloading songs or what have you is pretty much the only effective form of civil disobedience against these fuckholes.

This is too funny. Show me where in copyright law it says that no one may place their work into the public domain until it woul

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

There will soon come the day, where the yacht's principle wealth is the design itself. The price of all raw materials is always dropping, and automation will make the labor/construction all but free. I suspect this will be nanotechnology, though the underlying tech could be anything, who can say?

And the day it becomes possible for nanotech to make free, limitless food will be marked down in history as the day half the world's population started starving.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[RoofPig]

I was going to go through and make a half assed attempt at nitpicking every sentence you write in an effort to make your entire argument appear thoroughly debunked, but I decided to just take issue with a couple things that caught my eye first. I was also going to mention logic a lot in an effort to make my points seem somehow more factual when they really arent. Then I remembered I'm not an idiot basement dwelling Spock worshipper.

"And like the parent to my reply, you simply make up what I don't say. I never said there was a missing profit; I said someone takes a profit away."

Um, ok. Where's the "taken away" profit? All better now? Christ.

"Yeah, the people who created Unreal Tournament 2004 worked their asses off, as did the people who are working on Doom III. But hey, what right do they have to make money off their hard work?"

I could work my ass off doing a lot of things. It doesn't automatically mean anybody who benefits from my work "owes" me anything. I took a risk working on something that anyone could get for free with ease once I was done.

"This is too funny. Show me where in copyright law it says that no one may place their work into the public domain until it would naturally do so? Oh, you can place your copyrighted work into public domain whenever you wish? Defeats that logic."

Ok, I guess I'm going to have to spell this out for you. Copyright law allows corporations to control the rights to works indefinately instead of like before, when after a reasonable amount of time they would go to the public domain. So essentially if you wanted to keep making money for your art you had to make something else.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Blastrogath]

No one's being hurt, after all, since you couldn't afford them anyways.

Except, well, you're gaining something from their use and taking away a profit from those who created it. There are free alternatives to nearly every software package out there, so why not use them? If they don't meet your needs, lower your needs or raise your disposable income.

(empfasis mine)

How is it taking away a profit? If I copy something the origional still exists, so they can still sell it. They get no less money if I pirate something than if I never use it at all. This is why copyright violation is not theft.

I don't copy or support copying of copyrighted works, but copying copyrighted items is wrong only because it's illegal. Copyright law was writen and invented by mankind, it's not some kind of divine or moral imperitive.

IMHO spreading lies and disinformation about it being theft though, is in itself evil. Deception and lies are almost universaly acepted as being agaist either divine or moral imperitives.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[silicon not in the v]

Excellent response. You have been added as "friend".

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[ahodgson]

Identify theft is usually only a problem when it is used as a means for financial theft. Which does deprive the original owner of his or her money.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Unordained]

It's a question of consent. I don't agree with extending copyright law to keep things from going into the public domain: artists knew, at the time, how long their stuff would be protected. They produced creative works anyway. It's a sort of reverse-copyright-violation for them to try to extend it beyond that -- a violation of their contract with us.

I can't speak to corruption. That's the case regardless, and is a sad state of affairs.

Also note I was writing in the context of our current system: I wasn't arguing against alternate methods. If you want to have artists working for the government, producing their works "in the public domain" from day 1, fine. Art is important. Art is also vague enough that such a system would be abused in ways we can't even imagine yet. But it's worth a try, as are other solutions.

I'm not cheerleading. I'm telling you to either change your laws, or deal with them. Unless you consider copyright violations to be civil disobedience? Even so, you're still liable to be punished if you wind up on the losing side, just like a revolution or a war. It's righteous until the other side wins.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Unordained]

Fantasizing involves a lot of creative work on your part. We're talking about using someone else's creative work, without adding anything of our own (not even a derivative work, really.)

Yes, any interpretation (five senses) can be seen (under the right light) as creative. Yes, any non-creative "memory" could be seen as copyright violation. Humming a tune you remember, or just playing it in your head, or, like Cartman, being unable to do anything -but- play it in your head ...

You're right. Because nobody has to come out and open the fence for you, to help you trespass, obviously there's no cost on their end and therefore no right for them to tell you not to trespass. I'll remember that argument next time Farmer Maggot comes after me with a pitchfork.

Yes, setting up a toll booth at the gate of someone else's land is considered worse than just crossing for free yourself. That doesn't mean it's considered "right".

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to have to agree with your parent on this one. I play guitar not for any money I hope to make, but because I have to. If some people like listening to our music enough to give us money for it, great. If not, that's fine. I'm not going to have the government make you pay for it. Either you think it's worth it or you don't. Why involve anyone else? Greed?

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Unordained]

Theft is generally understood to involve removing control of an item from someone who currently controls it. Possession is 9/10 of the law -- once something is stolen, you can claim it's yours, but that doesn't automatically give you physical control back.

Copyright violation involves indistinguishable copies in limitless quantities. Truly, taking one does not reduce the number of available copies. The quantity left is the same as it was when you started. However, copyright itself is the right to control who has access to copies -- by taking copies without permission, you're effectively removing that exclusive right from its owner. You're sort of giving it to yourself, too, because many downloaders are also uploaders -- not only do you give yourself the right to take something, you give yourself the right to give it. Again, this seems to be available in limitless quantities, as millions of people all do this, all taking away an exclusive right and giving it to themselves (which destroys the exclusivity of the item, the copyright.)

From the point of view of consent, rape is still a violation of consent. ("viol" being the french noun.) Theft is also a violation of consent. Copyright is a violation of consent. Most crimes are, except for things like suicide, drugging yourself, conspiring, and where applicable, thought crimes. Yes, rape was chosen for sensationalism. Why? Because most people purposefully equate copyright violation with something trivial, to make it easier. Not because they've thought it through and decided it's qualitatively different, but because they think it's quantitavily different. Then again, doesn't the definition of rape in the US involve something about "sticking any body part of yours into someone else's orifice, of any sort, without their permission"? Such as sticking my finger in your nose? If you want to complain about trivializing something, don't look at me.

To answer your more-or-less ad-hominems, in reverse order ... yes, I'm cynical. Yes, I do talk about sex as though between animals, though not because of mysoginy. I'm not religious. You question about the bills made very little sense. Use a linux example, then we'll talk. Very few dealings with WinNT. Ask a "sex worker" if sex is a service or a product; ask the guys who think their women aren't providing enough of it, or the other way around. Analogies aren't meant to show that two things are identical: they're meant to find common ground, and cross-over attributes.

And yes, theft isn't theft unless it involves mugging someone, a close-contact crime. Good point. But yes, I did know the reference to rape would cause this reaction -- it always does. Just like bringing up slavery, nazi, or other references. It's so horrible we dare not accept it as a valid analogy for anything. Godwin was sadly right.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the hell modded this up?

The guy clearly has no comprehension of how the "real world" works.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[kaiidth]

Your first paragraphs are entirely irrelevant to my comment, since I disagreed with your definition of rape as "taking a service without permission" and am rather uninterested in joining a discussion about your philosophies re uploaders.

Thank you; I am aware of the French noun, viol. A more useful overview of rape in French law is available here, and may be briefly summarised in the following: "Tout acte de pénétration sexuelle, de quelque nature qu'il soit, commis sur la personne d'autrui par violence, contrainte, menace ou surprise est un viol [...] Le viol existe lorsque le consentement de la victime est vicié soit par la violence, la contrainte, la menace ou la surprise" I caution you to avoid making assumptions as to the implications of terms merely because they appear similar. As you are no doubt aware, faux amis (false cognates) are common in French, and many more words exist that correspond only in part to their English cognates. Whilst you are correct that rape involves a violation of consent, as stated in the linked definition, you must also note that "viol(er)" implies not only violation in the English sense, but desecration. A different expression does not necessarily alter the implications of the act behind the representation; it is the means by which the violation occur and the events within that make the rape, not just the existence of a circumstance legally definable as "violation of consent" or "consentement vicié". This explains why, at least in French, this term also appears in many other legal contexts (fraud, contract law, business law, etc).

Given that much of the audience here seldom visits the US, whatever trivialised definition of rape you personally may enjoy is hardly relevant to the discussion, in which you invoked the spectre of rape, not the badly-defined spectre of "offences ranging from the trivial to the serious, involving almost any form of invasive bodily contact without permission". You might realise why your "reference to rape would cause this reaction" - it is merely because it is a damn-fool stupid thing to say. Your comment, "Ask a 'sex worker' if sex is a service or a product; ask the guys who think their women aren't providing enough of it, or the other way around", is another (in which you may look for the sense underlying my "question about the bills"), and - ad hominem as this indeed is - underlines my suggestion of misogynism nicely. Would you call smiling a service? Watching a movie together? Sharing a joke? Perhaps you would. All of these are elements in human interaction, sex included. The mere fact that a subset of sexual activity with certain participants and conditions is de facto available for purchase does not require one to trivialise the whole issue.

In any case, the bottom line follows:- I've been there. Done that. Bought the T-shirt. I therefore feel entitled to note that I find your attitude childish and repellent, the sensationalism that you apply utterly inappropriate, and the apology provided in the original post to be inadequate. That said, I find your mitigation of the term "rape" rather amusing under the circumstances.

As for Godwin's law, I know of no law that states that "as a Slashdot thread grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving rape approaches one". The main reason for this is likely to be that there exist relatively few people daft enough to consider it as a helpful conversational gambit, despite its sensationalistic value.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Unordained]

On second thought, I apologize again, and ask that moderators (if they're still around) kindly moderate me into oblivion. I hadn't meant for the rape analogy to be taken as far as it was, nor had I meant to trivialize it (meaning instead to un-trivialize the other.) It was in bad taste, and I'm an idiot. Trespassing really is a much better analogy, based on consent, and comparatively trivial to copyright violation (in the minds of most.) Again, I'm sorry.

Re:using that to condemn phony accounting is fine

[Blastrogath]

That these corporations have effectively removed the part where works are supposed to go into the public domain for society's benefit as a whole pretty much nullifies any moral ground copyright laws once had. In my eyes (and I'm sure hundreds of you will disagree) downloading songs or what have you is pretty much the only effective form of civil disobedience against these fuckholes.

This is too funny. Show me where in copyright law it says that no one may place their work into the public domain until it would naturally do so? Oh, you can place your copyrighted work into public domain whenever you wish? Defeats that logic.

It doesn't defeat any logic. He's complaining that people are alowed avoid releasing copyrights into the public domain, not that they're barred from releasing copyrights into the public domain.

Copyrights are meant to encorage creation of copyrightable work so as in the long term to enhance the pool of art and knowlege in the public domain. They do this with short copyright terms. Longer terms do not result in significantly more copyrightable works being created and as such do not benifit society as much because they delay the full benifit of the copyrights til a later date.

Long term copyrights mainly benifit people who where inovative 30-50 years ago.

Court of public opinion

[Deitheres]

Of course the RIAA is going to fudge the numbers. If word got out that they were *GASP* not losing money, or at least not as much as they lead people to believe, it would make it oh-so-harder to justify their legal pursuit of grannies and pre-teens to the general public. As it is, it's a game of "oh look at us, we're the poor RIAA, we are making so much more money in a week than you poor consumers will ever make in our lives, but it's not as much as it used to be... we used to make more in a DAY than you would make in your entire life! Take pity on us, and understand why we are fucking the artists, and giving them pennies for every CD sold, so that we can afford limousines and caviar for our poor underfed kitties!". And the consumers eat it up, as evidenced by the ill-informed dolts saying things like "duh, anybody who downloads music off the internet is a thief". The RIAA makes it so that even if you download music that you're ALLOWED to (like Indy) it has a stigma associated with it. It's not about protecting "the artists", or the IP, it's about ensuring their lifestyle. They're thieves too, but in a way that is so much worse than average Joe Public who jumps on Kazaa or SoulSeek to download the new Creed/Eminem/[insert shitty pop band here] song-- Joe Public downloads the song because he likes or loves music, the RIAA and MPAA'ers of the world do what they do because they are money hungry fucks who will do anything they can to maintain their dominance.

I'm not a religious person, and I normally don't resort to Biblical citations, but I think this one applies:

"The love of money is the root of all evil." (also one of the most misquoted passages in the Bible just for the record).

On the reverse side, piracy is not the ideal situation either. I am a musician, and I hope someday to make a living off my music, but I know it won't be with a record deal-- and I sure as hell know it probably won't be from selling records. Hopefully by the time I am ready to try my music as a full time career we'll have something a bit more established that will allow truly independent music distribution, with a vehicle that guarantees the artist will at least see some money for their hard work.

Dan

Re:Court of public opinion

[Anonymous Coward]

"The love of money is the root of all evil." (also one of the most misquoted passages in the Bible just for the record).

Though technically "money is the root of all evil" is an accurate quote. There are the words, right there, in exactly that order. Just some interesting editing going on. :)

Re:Court of public opinion

[kamapuaa]

it would make it oh-so-harder to justify their legal pursuit of grannies and pre-teens to the general public

The RIAA doesn't exist for the sole purpose of going after people - obviously they must feel economically threatened by file-swapping, or why would they engage in something which results in so much bad press? The RIAA is acting in its own self-interest, not out of a desire to be cruel.

We're the poor RIAA, we are making so much more money in a week than you poor consumers

Of course the CEO's of the RIAA companies are rich, I don't really see that as relevant.

understand why we are fucking the artists, and giving them pennies for every CD sold

As an indie music fan, I must repeat: there are legitimate alternatives to the RIAA. It's widely understoon that signing to a major label is a Faustian deal, but musicians also know that only record labels have the promotional machine to take marginal & genuine talents and make them into stars. These artists signed contracts, they knew what they were getting into, and why...to claim they shouldn't be held to these contracts after hitting it big is odd logic.

Most music out there isn't RIAA, and is often very good. The way I see it, if you don't support the RIAA system, why not stop listening to the RIAA's music?

Re:Court of public opinion

[cancerward]

I'm not a religious person, and I normally don't resort to Biblical citations, but I think this one applies:

"The love of money is the root of all evil." (also one of the most misquoted passages in the Bible just for the record).

The replies so far have missed the point: this is the King James Version translation, which mistranslates the Greek. It's best to put the KJV alongside a modern translation like this:

• KJV For the love of money is the root of all evil...
• NASB For the love of money is a root of all sorts of evil...

For a more detailed study of the Greek, see White's ``King James Only Controversy''.

Re:Court of public opinion

[Deitheres]

Of course the CEO's of the RIAA companies are rich, I don't really see that as relevant.

You make several good points that I wish I had the time to address right now, but I've been awake for a long time and sleep is beckoning me.

However, I do want to address that statement briefly. There is, in my opinion, nothing wrong with having or making money. If that was at all what was conveyed I apologize. My issue is not with the fact that they have money, but that they use other people to get it (I will not enter into a debate about that, I'm sure many people think that all people who have a lot of money use other people to get it). You state that there are legitimate alternatives to the RIAA. This may be true, although the RIAA is the most "known" face of the recording industry, they have the most clout, and they hold most of the cards in the deck compared to the "other guys" in the recording industry. I view it as a Microsoft situation-- there are other alternatives available but, to draw a comparison, RIAA alternatives are only known to/used by the music geeks (listeners of indie. I view them as the music world equivalent of linux users).

I don't know what my point was really, because I am tired as hell. Basically, I think that until the RIAA alternatives start to speak up, the RIAA will be synonymous with the music world (at least to the uninitiated)

Re:Court of public opinion

[Frizzle Fry]

Yes, those words appear in that order. No, that doesn't make your quote "accurate".

honesty, not usefulness

[SuperBanana]

but it is fairly obvious that the RIAA is not reporting the most 'useful' numbers to the public

I believe the word you were searching for was "honest", not "useful".

Then again, this is peanuts compared to Hollywood which manages to make it look like every single movie looses (or makes very little) money so they don't have to pay taxes or pay people who are supposed to get a cut of the profits.

Of course, most of corporate america does exactly the same thing, which is why they've gone from a 52% tax share (versus individuals) to under 5% in 50 years.

Yes...

[Newer Guy]

There was a book out in the '60's called: "How to Lie With Statistics" Basically, you can find (or create) a statistic to say anything you want.

Power Hungry

[OneArmedMan]

Heh...

Massive power hungry, money grubbing corporations telling lies ..

Who would have thunk it .. ???

``` ~~~
O_o

Re:Power Hungry

[Deitheres]

I know! And the RIAA of all companies, what with their previous track record of honesty and piety!

seinfeld comeback

[jonastullus]

Jerry: "The ocean called, they're running out of shrimp"?? [He said that to you??]

George: Yeah, yeah, but then I said to him: "The jerk store called and they are running out of YOU!"

Jerry: You SAID that to him?

George: Well, *hmm* actually I thought it up on the way over here.

Jerry: *Ohh*, THAT's not quite the same

Re:seinfeld comeback

[Frizzle Fry]

The jerk store called and they are running out of YOU

You're they're all-time best seller.

Re:seinfeld comeback

[Frizzle Fry]

Oops, I accidentally used "they're". I guess I should be glad all the pedants are busy quibbling over the differences between "theft" and "copyright infringement".

Easy..

[CashCarSTAR]

Like other people have mentioned, record stores have been getting out of the business left and right. Either they've been closing, or switching over to more mixed media stores. The big boxes don't order huge inventories, especially of back catalog items, and smaller stores have been switching to other media types (DVDs and games mostly, very lucrative and growing markets)

So is this due to piracy?

Err..no.

Sales of the hit new music has remained pretty constant (which is expectable in a mostly stable marketplace), which are often the most easy to download, so it makes it obvious that something else is at play here...

Maybe it could be the MASSIVE growth of used media stores that have been popping up all over the place?

So what can be done about that? It's obviously legal, and easy to say that it's ethical to do, after all, we do have the right to sell what we have paid for...

My suggestion for the RIAA is to actually lay off the worrying about piracy, and instead, run an information and advertising campaign informing consumers about how when they buy a used CD, they are in fact ripping off their favorite artist. By changing the focus, and acting through education and not litigation they can regain some respectability, especially if they make a good argument for it.

Re:Easy..

[angle_slam]

WTF? Since when is there a MASSIVE growth in used media stores. In the Phoenix area, there is basically one chain of 5 stores that sells used music. None that opened since 1996. In the Bay Area, there are two separate chains with 5 stores total that sell used music. (There are a few other stores, but they are tiny and I doubt they sell much).

If what you said is true, there would be many used stores all over the place. If there are, I can't find them. Unless you mean Ebay, there isn't a MASSIVE growth of used music stores.

Re:Easy..

[corrosive_nf]

uhh you are really wrong, Amoeba record store sells ALOT in the bay area, anytime you go in, tons of people are buying cd's and yes even records.

Re:Easy..

[angle_slam]

I know about that store. They have 2 locations. From parent's remarks, used stores are popping up like Starbucks. In reality, there are 2 busy Amoebas and 3 sort of busy Streetlights.

ahhh statistics

[jonnystiph]

You know what they say 97.89% statistics are made up on the spot....

This was obviously a farce from the get go. Mp3's open people up to music they would have never bought, same can be said with libraries and books.

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[Nasarius]

Why ship physical packages that might not sell when you can just ship blank disks and figure out what to put on them later?

Because that's not how real CDs are manufactured.

See here for example.

Statistics

[darkitecture]

Ahh, statistics are wonderful things, aren't they?

Reminds me of a couple of classic quotes about statistics:

Aaron Levenstein once said "Statistics are like bikinis; What they reveal is suggestive, but what they conceal is vital."

and Thomas Carlyle once said, "A witty statesman said, you might prove anything by figures."

The thing is, I dislike the RIAA quite vocally, but I'd still probably believe them if they said their revenue is down. But the first thing they teach you about statistics in math is that "Correlation does not equal causation."

Re:Statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

are vital

Re:Statistics

[eoyount]

My favorite quote on the matter is:

"He uses statistics like a drunk man uses a lamppost: for support rather than illumination."

Sorry I don't remember who said it.

Re:It's not something we can ever get hard numbers

[miu]

That way people still get their free stuff, the music companies get a shit load of revenue without much effort on their part and everyone is a little happy.

Oh I get it, they take a loss with every sale, but then make it up on volume.

The Coalition of Independent Music Stores

[corrosive_nf]

This is why I support The Coalition of Independent Music Stores.

Re:The Coalition of Independent Music Stores

[jonastullus]

this is why I have switched to free (amateur) music from such places as garageband.

the recording quality is for obvious reasons inferior and some of the bands actually sound like amateurs, but for the most part I find the music better to listen to than the current charts. additionally I can promote a good band by downloading their music and don't have to worry whether the newest chart wonder, who claims to have come from the gutter through a life of hardship, is actually a casted middle class nerd.

not that I cared so much about the background of performers, but I DO hate to be lied to and especially when it is done to get my sympathies!

support free music - don't prolong the rip-off-music-industry tyranny - support the artists!

Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[rben]

This is another example of the kind of deceptive practices that the RIAA is using to convince congress to pass laws that turn our kids into criminals. The RIAA will continue to pursue this path until they learn that consumers will actually take a stand against it.

I would like to urge people to declare their independence from the RIAA on the week of July 4th, 2004. Boycott them. Do not purchase music or listen to the radio during that time. Instead, why not check out the independent artists that distribute their music for free? Show the RIAA that you know how to hit them back where it hurts... in the wallet.

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[Lord Bitman]

who the fuck buys a new CD more than once a week?

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[Anonymous Coward]

Yay, another call to boycott! As if Slashdotters currently buy enough RIAA CDs for anybody to notice when they stop... A 0.2% drop in sales in a usually slow month isn't going to even get noticed, much less serve as a warning that people are pissed off at the RIAA's actions. Try getting the word out to one of the RIAA's more significant market segments.

FWIW, I've been boycotting the RIAA for over three years now. Not that going from two CDs a year to zero makes any difference to them...

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[kwandar]

Actually, given the discrepancy between Soundscan (who measure all sales) and the RIAA, who measure only member sales, the boycott is in fact working.

Sites like Downhill Battle, RIAA Radar and Canfli.

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that if enough people don't buy one cd that week, it will hurt them, maybe enough for them to notice.

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[v_1matst]

well I do for one.

actually lots of people do.

go to a record store (an actual record store not best buy, wal-mart, target, whatever) and ask one of the clerks how many 'regulars' they have and how often they are in the store. You might be surprised that many customers come in more than once a week and buy more than one album per visit.

don't assume that other people don't do something just because you and/or the people you know do.

Re:Boycott the RIAA the Week of July 4th

[Lord Bitman]

Let me be more specific:
Who the fuck buys a cd more than once a week and would consider boycotting?
I mean, at this point, if you're not only still buying from the RIAA (sure, I do too occassionally), but are doing so Multiple Times in a single week, I have no reason to expect your support in any anti-riaa anything anyway. [yes that's three anys]

In other words

[Junior J. Junior III]

In other words, the geek boycott of RIAA labels is failing. I don't really see this as good news.

Re:In other words

[Flower]

There was a geek boycott? You'll have to excuse me. I'm obviously new here and wasn't aware us geeks had organized over a beer and stopped buying CDs.

My faux pau.

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[ThogScully]

Things change. Typically, no, commercial CDs aren't burned by a Plextor drive at the factory, but the market is changing and that's directing the industry to change too.

If burned discs aren't a solution, then they have to come up with a different solution. If they find a way to press one-off CDs because of the prodding, great for everybody. But maybe, just maybe, that's the hint that CDs themselves aren't the solution.

Don't consider it a problem that it can't be done now - it's an opportunity for a new product to be invented, a new mechanism to be introduced. Could be a digital distribution medium that will actually be researched rather than the crap they've been hacking together lately.
-N

We should kick it like the Nike-haters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sue them when they lie. Commercial speech isn't free. And if they're lying to make money maybe they can be held liable. But most importantly, they're on the defensive instead of the consumer. They have to defend not only the actions in a court of law, but in the court of public opinion as well.

Re:We should kick it like the Nike-haters.

[Joey7F]

No. If I am a business I can say things are bleak if they are great or things are great if they are bleak. They aren't misreporting the numbers they are merely not giving the full picture.

--Joey

Re:We should kick it like the Nike-haters.

[Anonymous Coward]

Which is what Nike was doing. And that landed them in court. You and I as individuals can blow sunshine and bullshit up each others asses until the world runs out of both. But once that becomes commercial speech, it isn't as free.

lets setup a shell to 'stuff the channel'

[sPaKr]

This shipping product to your retailer/resailers just to have it round trip and come back to you later is called 'stuffing the channel' its an old trick. Sales Scum (tm) use it all the time to inflate numbers at the end of a quarter. If they (RIAA) is going to count numbers by the overly simple math then lets beat them at their own game. I say we setup a "Retailer" that never sells anything but just orders shipments like crazy. This "Retailer" Hoovers up as many units as they can ship. Then it just turns around and ships them back as unsold stock. We might even be able to work out a deal with the delivery companies to not even deliver the units just move them from the shipping dock to the recieveing dock at the distribution points.

Re:lets setup a shell to 'stuff the channel'

[nolife]

You would need some expertise to get something like that going. I'm sure some ex-Enron executives could help.

This is nothing new

[PimpbotChris]

ARIA tried to hide their record CD sales from the Australian public Music industry way off track with song and dance about falling sales

Profit Model of the New Millenium

[SlimFastForYou]

1.) Announce a wholesale price hike, causing retailers to stock up on inventory, and purchase less the following year
2.) Attribute "fewer sales" to P2P
3.) Sue the butts off of "pirates"
4.) Appeal to the public as being truly hurt by these individuals, while extorting money from defenseless individuals who couldn't afford music in the first place
5.) ???
6.) Profit!!!

Note: By "pirates", I am referring to individuals who share music they MAY indeed own yet are "breaking the law" by doing so.

I don't say piracy is right or wrong. For those who can afford licensed media yet pirate, shame on them! For those who are concerned with the cost of living - I can't blame them. The RIAA isn't any better than the "pirates" they sue, as long as they employ dubious tactics.

RIAA is Dying

[Lost Penguin]

Netcraft reports, .., RIAA,..., Red ink, ;)

It would make a great troll!

Hardly Surprising!

[rspress]

Since most of the "losses" come not from file traders but from those who copy the full disc, including the liner notes and sells those on the street and even to music stores.

The RIAA once reported one in six discs that you buy is a pirate disc. This is where they are truly losing money. However if all this contrary information were to make it to the courts that are granting the search warrants for ISP's then it would be that much hard for the RIAA to get those warrants....and that would prevent them from getting the easy money from going after file traders.

Speaking of this easy money, has anyone seen the figures of how much the RIAA has brought in from these Nazi tactics and how much of that total was reimbursed to the artists who lost sales? Also how does the RIAA determine who has been pirated and how are the reimbursed? If someone were to bring these point up to the judge who is issuing warrants then the RIAA might really have to do something more than whine to get a warrant.

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[thePMG]

I doubt that, I'm sure the RIAA owns quite a few judges...

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[rspress]

I thought Microsoft owned them all ;-)

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[jnicholson]

I understand they're prepared to rent them out, when the cause is right.

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[rspress]

Rent them out? I thought the RIAA had already sold their souls?

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[payndz]

The RIAA once reported one in six discs that you buy is a pirate disc.

Since I don't buy the few CDs I can be bothered to listen to any more from car boot sales, market stalls or 'my mate's mate down the pub', that must mean HMV, Virgin Megastore, WH Smith, Essential Music, Our Price and Asda have all sold me pirate copies. Those bastards!

(Of course, I know the RIAA don't mean *me* personally. But it's more fun that way.)

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[2674]

I recently went over to Malaysia for a holiday and went shopping for Music. 9 out of 10 discs sold there (Music and MPAA DVD's) are pirated. CD/DVD Art, lyrics, liners and all. It is almost impossible to identify if a disc is pirated or legal, except by price.

Re:Hardly Surprising!

[rspress]

Of course the groups pirating the discs are not the boy scouts so the RIAA shies away from actively going after these groups. It is also not as easy as threatening some 80 year old grandmother with a lawsuit.

You really have to wonder about the RIAA. Since Apples iTunes Music Store has done so well they now want to punish them by raising prices well above what they charge for the disc at the store. Seems people are buying just the good songs from the disc and not the filler present on the discs that some artists put out. I am sure that since their sales are up this has come as quite a shock to the labels, since everyone who buys music has said to them that legal downloads would be good for business.

Maybe they will remove their heads from where they are currently at and see the world like it really is....of course being that far away from their bosses orifice might make it harder for them to brown nose.

Misquoted again

[chickenrob]

Yeah, I'm not sure if you know you yourself just misquoted the passage. It's 1 Timothy 6:10a "For the love of money is _a_ root of all kinds of evil." There is plenty of evil that doesn't involve money. The passage goes on to say people eager for money have "peirced themselves with many greifs" a.k.a. Mo Money Mo Problems!

Re:Misquoted again

[Anonymous Coward]

actually I think he was quoting the NIV version. I'm sure we could go on all day posting different versions of what is essentially the same damn thing.

Re:Misquoted again

[roguebfl]

Yeah, I'm not sure if you know you yourself just misquoted the passage. It's 1 Timothy 6:10a "For the love of money is _a_ root of all kinds of evil."

the Depends Which Vertion are you quoting?

Your vertion is correct in say the The American Standard Version, But the in the The King James Version (Authorized) the correct wording is "For the love of money is the root of all evil:"

so neither of you are 'universally' correct.

Re:Lies, marketing...

[sydlexic]

Thats just marketing and lies, and those are the roots of all evil.

capitalism is the root of all evil?

When Harry met Sally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Stealing and infringement are different things.

One is a real cost, the other is an opportunity cost which has some real value. But that can be negligable when compared to the real cost, and is at best difficult to quantify.

They *are* different. Potatoes are not tomatoes, yet both are plats and foodstuffs. You may like to use the terms interchangibly, but that just means you don't know any better. If you refuse to know any better, then you are stupid by choice. Again, it's a free internet, so organize your priorities however you wish.

Re:Lies, marketing...

[IWannaBeAnAC]

Err, how did you arrive at that implication?

let's ignore the existing music industry!

[nicodietrich]

why not create an alternative music business together with unknown artists? i just had an idea of a new promotion method - the permanent listening test... i posted it here

nico

Is this really a surprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I'm quite sure they do possess the chutzpah to try such a thing, it would be kind of hard for the RIAA to persuade the gummint to pass laws like the DMCA if they didn't have statistics to whine about, claiming RIAA members are bleeding money from every orifice due to piracy.

It makes sense with their way of thinking...

[DroopyStonx]

They believe that every single pirated song was a guaranteed sale, which is not the case.

Just because a person has 4,000 songs doesn't mean that they would've purchased ALL of those CDs had they not had the means to download them... but the RIAA stands firm in their belief that this is possible.

context

[Deitheres]

Just like I could say:

"and the bible says 'In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth ... The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God's people. Amen'" (that is Genesis 1:1 and Revelation 22:21)

gotta love taking things out of context :-)

A few possible explanations.

[Stephen Samuel]

1. fake products -- scam artists shipping stuff to stores that RIIA membership doesn't know about -- but good enough to fool consumers (haven't heard of this running rampant).
2. Less spoilage (shipping fewer, selling more, returning way less). Better profits all the way 'round. Works for stores, artists get more money, so does the RIAA.
3. RIAA scam (they tell artists "140M records", but they sell 160M) -- but the RIAA wouldn't do that would they???

Note that, in all possible circumstances, record sales are up.

Only in (1) would the RIAA (and artists) actually get less money, but that's not the fault of the "pirate scum" 12 year olds that the RIAA insists on suing. If this is the case, then the RIAA needs to start going after the real pirates, and stop suing kids.

For (3), The artists are getting less money, but that would be because the RIAA is scamming on both ends (cheating artists, raising prices, suing customers). It'd take a public scandal to fix that.

Re:A few possible explanations.

[BCW2]

For 3. Several RIAA members just lost a big case where they claimed they didn't have curent address for many "stars". They now have to pay them the 40M in royalties they were "holding". I think I could jump over to Tennesee and leave Dolly Partons check at her amusement park.

They lied, they got caught, they will pay.

Diatribe

[BiggerIsBetter]

There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and steal it (and please no diatribe on whether steal is the right word).

OK, you *know* it's the wrong word, and yet you use it anyway? You sir, are being an industry shill.

So if you stole it, it should be considered a lost sale, as you obviously wanted the music but chose to steal it instead of buying it.

A "lost sale" is someone stealing a CD off the counter, or even a customer walking out without buying anything because the clerk pissed them off - but we are talking about copying from media that has alrady been bought, not the theft of a product. It's a subtle difference that business doesn't like to acknowledge because all they see is dollars that they didn't get. It's like NOS getting pissy abuot "lost sales" when people build a DIY nitrous system for their car. Sure, they didn't sell a kit to someone who was interested in their stuff, but if the price was closer to the reproduction cost + hassle of DIY, they probably would have. Not being competitive in the market place is the reason they "lose" sales like this, plain and simple.

Once again, it's not a lost sale if you weren't going to get it anyway. I'm interested in lots of music, but I'm not going to buy a $32 NZD industry backed CD because they are a complete rip-off (I also don't download MP3s either). Having said that, I bought a $5 NZD CD of driving music from the gas station last night. Pricing is a key issue - they'll bleat about the cost of producing new music, but if the industry wasn't snorting their profits and spent less playing at being rock stars prices would be more realistic.

And BTW, the same retail vs wholesale thing is the reason (pop star|idol) tops the charts the week of release - nobody bought it except the stores, but the punters see it in the charts and buy it 'cos a) it *must* be good if it's in the charts, b) it's advertised everywhere so it's all they know. The music recording industry is a joke - go down to the pub this weekend and supprt your local bands instead.

Re:Diatribe

[Anonymous Coward]

Another minor detail worth to mention is that "lost sales" are calculated with the sales-prices of the medium (mostly a CD), even when a copy off a CD is not a physical CD, but only just the data on it (that's why it's not theft :-).

The price of the carrier-medium should therefore not have been included in the loss-calculation, as that physical stuff is obviously not included in the data-copying process.

Even better: the calculation should be done over the lost copyright-revenue for the artist, (which the RIAA is supposed to fight for).

But that would not generate large, impressing financial loss-numbers, which in turn will not impress gullible people, and is therefore not of interrest to the RIAA and consorts (and could alert the buyer how little the artist eventually receives off a sale ...)

I'll do what's best for me

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll try to be fair with the RIAA, but when it comes down to it, I'll do it my way.

Re:Another shocking fact

[0x0d0a]

Windows, yes; I'm dubious that Internet Explorer is still in favor among Slashdot readers. I know of few people that have tried recent builds of Firefox and still prefer MSIE. Mozilla used to be well behind when it came to user experience, but things have seriously changed.

I'm using a Windows machine at the moment because I'm not near my own computer, and I can't exactly put Linux on someone else's computer.

More Mega-Store Efficiencies and Other Trends

[Anonymous Coward]

> Another interesting thing has happened over the last few years. The growth of mega-chains such as Best Buy plus the .com's joining into the marketplace have knocked mom and pop record stores out of existance.

Excellent point. But it goes further than you suggest.

It is much easier for a mega-store to predict its sales, and manage its inventory efficiently, than it is for a small store.

For example, a small store might receive shipments once a week, or even once a month. For a given CD, that store might expect to sell just two copies before the next shipment, but a week or a month is a long time to be sold out of something, so that store will want to stock three, or more likely four copies of that CD. That's 50% excess inventory on average. Plus, there is nothing the small store can do with that excess except to return it with the next delivery truck.

But a mega-store will receive shipments every day. Plus, the mega-store might expect to sell 5 copies per day of that same CD. So let's say the mega-store keeps 10 copies of that CD on the shelf, with re-orders every day, and ends up returning the excess 5 copies at the end of a month. But that's 5 copies returned on a month's sales of 150 copies, which, in the long run, only represents an excess inventory of 3%.

And let's not forget the mega-stores' other advantages for efficient inventory management, including computerized check-outs, and the ability to move inventory around from one store to another.

So it shouldn't surprise us if excess CD shipments have been drastically reduced.

I can see another way in which Internet Radio, and music downloads would lead to more efficient sales. Today's buyer will go the the record store with better knowledge of what he/she likes and wants. Thus, that buyer will be less likely to pick up the mass-marketed Britney Spears CD, and more likely to pick up some lesser known band. It's not worth it to the record store to stock extra boxes of a small band's CD, the way they would with a Britney Spears CD. Plus, it's less likely for there to be a sudden rush on that small band. Thus, the trend is away from the mass-marketed items, where it's worth it to be wasteful (and necessary, to meet the peaks), and toward more highly focussed items, which sell a few at a time. And let's not forget the increase in the almost-100%-efficient special order sales.

As to the drop in international sales, I think that is more likely to be a shift away from the heavily-advertised American groups, and toward the less-advertised local groups in each country. Once again, Internet Radio and downloads would allow listeners in each country to discover those other groups, rather than simply being led by U.S. advertising. I assume that many, if not most of those smaller groups' sales in other countries are _not_ measured by the RIAA.

Re:More Mega-Store Efficiencies and Other Trends

[Tiram]

As to the drop in international sales, I think that is more likely to be a shift away from the heavily-advertised American groups, and toward the less-advertised local groups in each country. Once again, Internet Radio and downloads would allow listeners in each country to discover those other groups, rather than simply being led by U.S. advertising. I assume that many, if not most of those smaller groups' sales in other countries are _not_ measured by the RIAA.

I don't know if this is a trend everywhere, but it seems to be true for Norway. First quarter this year, the sale of Norwegian CDs* was up by 46% volume (54% value) compared to the same period last year. 21% per cent of the CDs sold were Norwegian, up from 14% last year.

* Not including singles and DVDs, which probably would have pushed the numbers even higher.

Ref: Sterk økning i salg av norsk musikk (in Norwegian, I'm afraid ...:)

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[Nasarius]

Fine, and you can buy them. I don't want crap quality CDs that die in two years, myself.

The Wal-Mart Effect In Action

[cmholm]

As other posters have pointed out, retailers are carrying less stock than was previously mandated by the RIAA. Why? While we'd like to think this has something to do with mp3 and Kazaa, I think it's primarily due to Wal-Mart.

Wal-Mart is renowned for forcing it's suppliers to radically revamp their operations to meet Wal-Mart's needs. Wal-Mart dictates to it's suppliers, demanding just-in-time inventory control and annual - if not quarterly - wholesale price drops. 20% of CD and DVD retail dollars now flow through Wal-Mart. With that kind of buying pull, recorded music became yet another consumer item that Wal-Mart could live without, but that couldn't live without Wal-Mart. If we go with the theory that Sam Walton's boys popped the RIAA's cherry during the buyer's renegotiations, that probably provided leverage for other retailers from Kmart to Tower Records to cut the same deal, especially during a down economy.

I wouldn't be surprised to find that the gusto with which the music industry tries to squeeze more blood out of consumers by lobbying Washington and other capitals was in direct relation to how much of they're getting squeezed in Bentonville, AR.

Re:This article

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA wants to remove the Fair Use provisions in the law -- provisions that give you the right to legally copy _your own_ CDs and DVDs. Thus, you would no longer be able to make backups, or listen to your CDs on your computer, and so on.

Further, the RIAA wants to impose DRM restrictions, which would force you to buy only RIAA-approved CD and DVD players -- at a higher price.

And now it turns out that the RIAA's claims may be based on a lie?!!

And you don't have a problem with that??!!!

Either you're a fool, or you're working for one of the company's, such as Microsoft, that is hoping to profit from government-imposed DRM. I can inderstand why Microsoft would want the RIAA's lies to go unchallenged.

Sorry, but that's failed logic

[Sycraft-fu]

I can turn it right around and have just as valid an argument:

There are 2 ways to get music, buy and and copy it (it's not theft, get a dictonary, theft requires removal of property). Copying costs nothing, so you can do it even if you have no money. So if you copy something, it should not be considered a lost sale, as you obviously didn't want or were not able to spend the money to buy it.

The reality of the situation is as simple as ECON 101 and the law of supply and demand. The cheaper something is, the more people will want it. I do not want a Plasma TV at $5000. I can't afford it, even if I cared to. I still wouldn't want it at $1000. I could afford that, but it would be too high an oppertunity cost for what I'd gain. I would want one at $200, and would purchase it at that price.

The same is true of music, or any other good. Copying music costs nothing, or rather the costs are things you already pay for (such as a computer and an Internet connection). Thus you only have to want something a little bit (enough to make it worth your time) to copy it. CDs cost $15-$20. That means you have to want them enough to feel they are worth that amount of money, and also have that amount of money free to spend. If not, you don't buy it. Thus just because you wanted it for free does not mean you want it for $20.

What's more there is the case of tradeoff and oppertunity cost. I had $600 to spend on computer upgrades. I wanted a new monitor (Lacie Electron Blue), new graphics card, new processor, and better cooling/acoustic gear. The monitor alone is about $600, the other items total to about $600. Thus I had to make a choice. I opted not to get the monitor, because I wanted the other parts more. That doesn't mean that I don't want the monitor. It also doesn't mean that I would have bought it if I could have (if both choices had been $300 day), or if it had been offered to me for free. This applies to music as well. Just because someone copies 30 CDs does not mean there were 30 potenital sales. It is highly likely that they did not have the available cash to be able to buy all those. If their available cash that they could spend on CDs was only $40, then at most two of those 30 could have been purchased. However, at $0, all 30 were wanted enough to be worth getting, and within the available resources.

You, and the record companies, are comming to a conclusion based on insufficient premises. You cannot conclude that a copy equals a lots sale, it doesn't logically follow. So, revise your thinking.

Oh, and there HAVE been empirical studies done on this. I cannot find the link presently, but /. reported on it. Two universities found just what I have reasoned here: That very few copies translate to lost sales.

In the words of Nelson on the Simpsons...

[Anonymous Coward]

HA! HA!

#2 is a big one

[Sycraft-fu]

As others have noted, Just In Time inventory is getting real popular. Since shipping now happens quickly and you can track everything on compuer from what your supplier has, to what's on trucks, to yout warehouse to your stores, it is now feasable to have much less on hand and just replenish it more often. It is VERY popular these days since it keeps costs down (it's expensive to have shit sit on shelves).

The Short, Short Version

[crashnbur]

The RIAA is lying because, like most corporations, it is only interested in the preservation of its profits.

Re:Lies, marketing...

[Drishmung]

He read today's userfriendly?

I met a sony music contracts executive

[holy_smoke]

on a shared cab ride 2 days ago, and we got to talking about P2P, so I slyly asked her if perhaps they had considered that "maybe DVDs, game consoles, cell phones, and gameboys may be competing for entertainment dollars?"

"NO, Absolutely not - its P2P, the children don't understand and need to be educated. Those other explanations are nonsense." she said

I said "hmmm, well are you sure, cause it..."

"Yes we are absolutely sure. These P2P programs are set up to steal and kids don't realize what they are doing it wrong. Its silly and inexcusable, we need to change their attitude."

So you see - they don't CARE to see any facts or evidence that point away from their view. They don't WANT to hear it. And this not wanting or caring will re-enforce their current behavior patterns. It will also cloud their minds such that EVERY way they approach the problem will have P2P destruction or absolute control in mind.

What they DO understand that "war does not determine who is right, war determines who is left".

Off topic: Latin .sig

[Michael Woodhams]

Populus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.

Using the great and wonderful words program, I find you're using passive mood and subjunctives, but, alas, I never reached those chapters in my Latin text book.

I'm guessing "The people wish to be deceived, therefore they may be deceived."

Re:Off topic: Latin .sig

[mvdwege]

More like: "People want to be deceived, therefore they shall be deceived."

Mart (brushing of his high school Latin).

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[Anonymous Coward]

as opposed to crap quality CDS that die in two years due to scratches?

It's time to change sampling techniques?

[MtViewGuy]

I think the problem that is affecting groups like the RIAA, MPAA, the television networks, and so on is the fact that their techniques for measuring things like sales and viewership are being rapidly obseleted by changes in communications technology.

If you're read Alvin Toffler's book The Third Wave, Toffer some 25 years ago said that as more communications choices for consumers become available, old means to measuring "eyeballs" won't work anymore. I mean look at what has happened since The Third Wave was published in 1979:

1. Consumers now possess the technology to time shift TV programming by videocassette recorders and increasing digital Personal Video Recorders, which is making the idea of prime time meaningless.

2. The choice of TV programming has literally increased exponentially. Back in 1979, most Americans could only watch at most 5-7 channels of TV programming on over-air broadcasts; today, cable TV has expanded the available channels to over 70 and small-dish satellite TV has expanded the available channels to over 200!

3. The rise of pre-recorded videocassettes and now DVD's have drastically altered the landscape of both movies and TV programming. Indeed, many movies are only breaking even with home video sales (or doubling their profit with home video sales!) and there's now the new trend of complete TV seasons available on DVD! I'm sure HBO has enjoyed healthy sales of full seasons of The Sopranos, Sex and the City, and Six Feet Under on DVD sets.

4. The rise of the public Internet has also started to affect TV viewership, as several recent surveys have shown.

5. Current methods of measuring TV viewership don't take into account the increasing trend of large scale public viewing of TV programs at public gathering places and/or having a large group of friends watching the program at someone's residence. For example, the final episode of Friends probably got underreported by Neilsen tracking because a large portion of viewers probably saw it in a group setting either in a public place or at a private residence with a large living room.

6. Tracking sales of music will have to be revamped, especially in light of the way Wal-Mart handles sales inventories, the sheer retail power of Best Buy, the heavy use of online sales at Amazon and Barnes & Noble web sites, and individual song downloads at various legal sites such as Apple's iTunes web site.

I think if the various media companies actually bother to change their way of monitoring sales/viewership they could actually get a far more accurate measurement, something that could eliminate underreporting of actual sales/viewership.

Re:It's time to change sampling techniques?

[Alsee]

if the various media companies actually bother to change their way of monitoring sales/viewership they could actually get a far more accurate measurement, something that could eliminate underreporting of actual sales/viewership

Except the RIAA wants to underreport sales. They intentionally manipulate the numbers. They want other media to carry the 'big story' of the 'evil piracy'. They want to manipulate the public. But most of all, they want to manipulate congress and lawmaking.
-

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[PetWolverine]

When meta-modding, how are you supposed to know if a redundant moderation is fair or not without reading way too much?

That's why I haven't been meta-modding redundant posts lately. I just leave the radio button where it is, and don't mod anything Redundant.

Yeah..But unfortunately....

[Newer Guy]

True...but unfortunately, they've been able to convince (lobby, bribe, blackmail, or put your own descriptor in here) Congress and the courts that they're right. So, once again we have the best Govt. $$ can buy!

Your left hand has eggs?

[Jeffool]

Who knew?

The Mighty Moses Strikes Out

[MacWiz]

Mr. Avalon almost got a clue there, but he missed the forest because he was able to identify two new varieties of trees.

Maybe next year he'll notice that:

a) Soundscan reports millions more CDs sold at retail than the RIAA reports having shipped to retail outlets (about 60 million for the past two years);

b) Since 2000, the numbers of "units" shipped to "promotional and specialty" outlets (aka record clubs), has dropped by 50%, accounting for the bulk of the industry's decline;

c) The REAL important numbers are how many units were shipped and how many units were returned.

The RIAA's numbers are designed to provide no useful data whatsoever.

SEC can haul your @ss in for misleading investors

[MacDork]

• No. If I am a business I can say things are bleak if they are great or things are great if they are bleak. They aren't misreporting the numbers they are merely not giving the full picture.

If you are a publicly traded company you can't. RIAA is just a trade association, so I don't know how much trouble they can get into for misleading the public. However, depending on how AOL, Sony, and friends go about 'not giving the full picture,' they can easily land themselves in class action lawsuits and hefty fines.

Lies, Damn lies and statistics

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations on a fabulous advertising campaign Mr RIAA. You do yourself credit. The way you can flick through your own sales statistics and prove what you like. I am sure given enough numbers, I could come up with a good statistically backed arguement as to why file shareing must not be stopped for the good of the music industry. Please do not insult our collective intelligences by lying to us. We share information now, so this will mean that we can spot a lie from quite a ling way away. You don't like this? You don't have to. This is the environment you must either do business in or shut up shop. As a musician, I can say with all certainty that your demise will not prevent people playing music. Neither will it prevent people recording and sharing music. Accept this and move on. By the way. Theft is not copying. Neither is copying theft. Beware of the confusion that such language will bring about. It will bite you on the buttocks.

"If any man desires to come after Me...

[luke923]

"...let him deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow Me."
...I Wonder what verse that is?

Anyway, whether I Tim 6:10 hold a definite or indefinite article is of ill-consequence, because, according ot Matthew 6:24, "No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."

Most theologians recognize the word mammon to mean money or materialistic wealth. As a matter of fact, the NIV flat-out replaces mammon with money. In any regard, the reason that I Tim 6:10 is so often misquoted is because most of the time some Marxist wants to advance his agenda by making it more palettable to unsuspecting and - dare I say it - willfully ignorant Christians. But, the most important part about this verse is that whether you are Christian, Muslim, or Jew (yes, even Jews. Read Joshua 24:20 from the Amplified for a clearer understanding) greed steals from the soul and brings you closer to Hell.

I think I'm done with the theological discussion, unless someone else has something else to add.

These numbers don't matter

[71thumper]

Music piracy (or whatever you'd like to call the rampant copying of music) is unrelated to the numbers. It's wrong. It's always been wrong and sitting here trying to come up with excuses is hypocritical from a group that zealously defends Open Source.

After all:

* No one loses the use of the original source when someone like Linksys modifies the source and doesn't release it.

* No one loses money because a company doesn't release its changes back to the community.

In short, if copying music is okay, then taking open source projects, modifying them, and selling them commercially without releasing the source can't possibly be bad.

Either intellectual property means something, or it doesn't. But make sure you appreciate the ramifications before espousing the "anyone should be able to do anything" argument.

Steve

Re:These numbers don't matter

[donkeyoverlord]

I don't think anyone has said that downloading music that is not free is a good thing(TM). It's wrong we ALL know that. But your analogy does not apply to the situation.

* No one loses the use of the original source when someone like Linksys modifies the source and doesn't release it.

* No one loses money because a company doesn't release its changes back to the community.

If I download the source code to the Linux Kernel modify and then SELL it as MY PRODUCT then the community is hurt. The same goes for music if I download a song, remix it and the RESELL it for a huge profit (I didn't pay for the original so all profit is huge) then that would be a 'bad thing'.

If I understand the GPL correctly a company doesn't have to release changes back to the community if it doesn't release the product. But once again if your making a profit selling something that is not your's then you a a pirate (ARGH!).

Re:These numbers don't matter

[Anonymous Coward]

> In short, if copying music is okay, then taking
> open source projects, modifying them, and
> selling them commercially without releasing the
> source can't possibly be bad.

But the incentive for them to do that is _created_ by the "intellectual property" fiasco. Without "IP", they wouldn't have any reason to keep their version closed, so the problem wouldn't arise.

> Either intellectual property means something,
> or it doesn't.

It doesn't. Or at least it shouldn't.

> But make sure you appreciate the ramifications
> before espousing the "anyone should be able to
> do anything" argument.

Looks like they did. Looks like you didn't.

-Greg

Re:These numbers don't matter

[jimand]

I don't think anyone is defending copying; I think the main point is that the RIAA claims that pirated music costs them money when the facts seem to point to the opposite.

Didn't CD sales go down after Napster was shut down? The RIAA's argument is that every electronic copy is a lost sale but that's clearly ridiculous. If I hear a song on the radio I like I'll look for other songs by the same group; if I still like the group I'll buy their CD.

Those electronic copies are selling CDs. While I agree that some people only listen to e-copies and never buy a CD and I believe that's wrong, the RIAA seems to miss the point that e-copies are building sales, not reducing them.

Re:These numbers don't matter

[ArchmagusArcana]

Personally, i will not purchase a movie game or any sort of music unless i have listened, played or watched it. Thats the way i am. If it is worth paying for i will gladly lay down the money for it, but i wont buy crap. If you buy a desk or a dvd player or something and its not what you wanted you can take it back or exchange it, same with most other retail items. sometimes you play a restocking fee, but beyond that, there is no hassle. Until it is the same way with these three items piracy will continue. There are tons of great bands that i would have never even heard of, or bought cds from if it were not for P2P. A lot of this is to do with radio, but thats a different topic.

Why I downloaded it

[amix]

When I am hungry and I have no money I steel the food.
That simple.

If I died hunger, would that be more ehtic in your view ?

Besides that, your example with the cab-driver does not work. The homeless would intrude a foreign property and force (kidnap, so to say) a human. There is a big difference, not alone in the amount of violence required.

Four years ago I went to the music-store. I wanted to buy the Bomfunk MC's "Burning Sneaker" CD. I could have downloaded it from the net. I didn't, simply, because I like the band and wanted to reward them for my funky funky.

Guess what ?!

The CD did cost 10% of the (then) monthly netto income of the country I live in. Again in words: TEN FUCKING PERCENT OF MONTHLY NETTO INCOME.

And it got better:

The CD read: Not compatible with PC and MAC.
Too bad I have sold my CD player and replaced it with a HTPC...

The CD is published by SONY music!

Did you know, that SONY got big by COPYING US radios ? Heck, half if not more of the Japanese economy got built on copying and imitating other people's invention. _Then_ they started innovating. With the money, they got by copying other people's stuff. Right.

So, I had to pay for a CD, costing 10% of this countries monthly netto income, which was not usable on my AV entertainment system...

Of course, I didn't.

Guess what ?

I downloaded it!

Re:Why I downloaded it

[amix]

I should have added http://magnatune.com/

While you won't get Sting or ACDC there, it still is worth the visit.

Choose between MP3, WAV and whatever for as small as USD5 to UD18, as you like it.

Re:Why I downloaded it

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know, that SONY got big by COPYING US radios ? Heck, half if not more of the Japanese economy got built on copying and imitating other people's invention. _Then_ they started innovating. With the money, they got by copying other people's stuff. Right.

Same for everyone. The US got rich by stealing European inventions. The Europeans got rich by stealing Arab inventions. The Arabs got rich by stealing Indian and Chinese inventions. God only knows where they got those from, probably aliens or something, but I bet they didn't come up with them themselves.

Re:Why I downloaded it

[amix]

The US got rich by stealing European inventions.

Not quite right. They invaded Germany and took the scientists with them. Wernher von Braun (Apollo Program) was glad to work for the US and so were many others. The Europeans got rich by stealing Arab inventions.

Not true either. The Arabs did not have the patent-system back then ;). So it wasn't stealing. Besides that, this was happening rather late, since during the middle-age in the Christian culture most of the Arab (and Jewish) stuff was forbidden, such as taking apart dead bodies to study them.

The Arabs got rich by stealing Indian and Chinese inventions.

Well, in the end I stole the inventions of my teachers in school. Did you ever hear about "learning" ? :)

That does not mean, that Marco Polo did not steal inventions from the Chinese. Indeed, he did (Silk, Gunpowder, Compass)

Identity "Theft" vs Real Theft

[goldfndr]

Regarding identity "theft": if you were to masquerade as someone else in a closed system then yes, this wouldn't be harmful. For example, if I told a bunch of people at a bar that my name was Clint Eastwood, it's a pretty closed system and wouldn't matter. But if I were to use a bank card or ID or something else in his name, this can alter the influence/perception/composition of his identity thus making it something it wasn't previously. And if I knew enough to submit a legal name change or otherwise deprive him of something, that perhaps should be considered theft.

(While I use Clint Eastwood just because I saw BttF3 recently, the above applies to any other person.)

Of course, compare with copying a song - if, within the confines of one's home, it's in a closed system and not theft. But if you were to alter the master copy of that song or deprive the "owner" of that song... but how likely is that?

Re:Identity "Theft" vs Real Theft

[Anonymous Coward]

"But if I were to use a bank card or ID or something else in his name, this can alter the influence/perception/composition of his identity thus making it something it wasn't previously."

In the case of copyright infringement, you're also causing an alteration -- you're eroding the value of the copyright holder's exclusive right to duplication.

This is just sad.

[MtViewGuy]

I cannot believe that the Sony music executive has effectively ignored what Alvin Toffler warned about in his book The Third Wave when that book was published in 1979!

With today's communication technologies, the market for movies, TV shows, and recorded music has been severely fragmented compared to what it was like in 1979. Doesn't the executive realize that things like changes in the way CD's are sold (thanks to supersized retailers with tight inventory controls like Wal-Mart and Best Buy and the rise of online retailers like Amazon.com), the rise in the last few years of legal music download sites like Apple's iTunes web site, and competition from DVD and various kinds of game consoles has severely cut into what was once a monolithic market for music sales?

Already doing it

[Anonymous Coward]

They don't have anything I want anyway.

Re:It's not something we can ever get hard numbers

[snooo53]

I'm sure you know ever really getting hard numbers on piracy is impossible just because the nature of the industry and who would really buy something if they couldn't get it for free.

I have to disagree with you. On the contrary, I think the majority of people would choose buying something over getting it for free. The catch here is that the item has to be priced reasonably. It all comes down to economics. At $5 a cd, piracy would drop to negligible levels. If you go even lower to $2 a cd I daresay no one would even bother to copy them anymore (except for making mix cds). Why? Because it's simply not worth the time and effort when you get a shiny pressed cd with artwork and a case for your pocket change.

I think they should embrace and encourage, maybe give a biz model similar to what Napster was pushing for. A distributed model (sign the music so you know it isn't tampered with) that will is a premium up and above the free realm stuff like kazaa.

Again, I have to disagree. There is simply no way people are going to willingly give up their bandwidth and hard drive space so a company can make money off that. I suppose if you're clever though with the spin, you could get the crowd that clicks on the punch the monkey ads to run it.

False analogy and NewSpeak

[Starrider]

See a movie.
Go to a concert.
Get a car repair (excluding "parts" cost).
Go to an amusement park.
Go to a doctor's office.

What there is tangible? Try doing it with no money in your pocket, though, and you'll be booted as soon as you're caught.

You are using false analogy to compare things that aren't even remotely equivelent.

If you try and stiff your auto mechanic it isn't theft, it's a contract breach. You agree to pay for services rendered. Refusal to pay is breach of contract. You cannot "steal" someone's time as time is something intangible. You are guilty of failing to meet your contractual obligations. The doctors office is the same idea. It is NOT theft, or stealing, despite the propaganda.

Sneaking into a movie/concert/amusement park without paying is TRESPASSING, not THEFT. All of those places are private property, and you do not have permission to be there without paying. You can't be arrested for stealing if you don't take any physical property. You can be charged with trespassing.

The only difference between a concert and a recording is that the recording is time-shifting the work from its original time and location. If you're not paying for the recording, it's tantamount to hiring without pay.
Uh, wrong again bucko. Saying an apple is an orange does not make it so. First of all, you aren't paying for the recording, you are paying for a copy of the recording. (That is what copyright is all about...control of copying). Did you hire the musician directly? No. Purchasing a copy of a work is not the same as hiring someone on contract to perform. If you think copyright infringment is theft, I suggest you look at the law itself. Secondly, not paying for a concert can't be considered theft under any definition. If I hear a copyrighted work in the open air without paying am I guilty of theft? Of course not! The only thing I would be guilty of is being on private property without permission...trespassing.

Your logic is troubling, because it is Orwelliean speak. Instead of using the proper words and definitions, words with stronger connotations are used.

Words have distinct meanings/definitions, and if you deliberately distort words to invoke passions in your audience you are no better than Goebels in the Third Reich or any other propagandist! The meaning of a word does not change just because a few elites claim it does. "Moral equivelancy" is hogwash for the simple reason that the law does not make such equivelences. "Moral equivelency" is for people making rationalizations based on their personal opinions, not facts, laws, or even basic definitions found in the dictionary.

I am _not_ saying copyright infringement is morally sound, but I am stating that you get either a) a dictionary or b) some legitimate legal definitions before you throw around such drivel.

Re:False analogy and NewSpeak

[Anonymous Coward]

owned.

Re:False analogy and NewSpeak

[FLEB]

"Moral equivelancy" is hogwash for the simple reason that the law does not make such equivelences.

----

1.) Read more carefully.
2.) Think less literally.

Did I ever say infringement was theft? No. I was agreeing with the GPP, that it was similar to hiring without pay (bouncing a paycheck), and disagreeing with the PP's argument of "Money and everything it buys is tangible."

There's this idea that if infringement isn't theft, than there's nothing (or less) wrong with infringement. Since there's no event of "I have this thing, which is not yours anymore, but is mine.", then no one is really losing anything, are they? (Not your argument per se, but a general feel I get.)

The PP seems to think that money is only for exchanges of tangible goods. I refute this with the bullet-list.

You can say "Well... that's CONTRACT infringement, and that's TRESPASSING..." The fact remains: The underlying reason you'd be kicked out for not paying in these situations is the fact that you did not pay, for these things which the PP says are intangible and irrelevant.

Regarding "Words have distinct meanings/definitions...", certainly someone who compares me to "Goebels in the Third Reich" can understand the concepts of COMPARISON and SIMILE. The fact that an apple is not an orange is true. To say they are not both fruit, however...

Re:False analogy and NewSpeak

[Anonymous Coward]

(Please disregard the quoted part at the top of that message. I deleted and revised out the bit that was relevant, but I forgot to erase the quote.)

Mods? +5 WTF? There's a HUGE difference.

[MacDork]

• If they have the moral and legal right to seek action against people who pirate music in the case where piracy is costing them lots of sales, then they have that same right in the case where it doesn't hurt them much or at all (or even helps them).

You mean to tell me you see no difference in organized crime pressing counterfeit copies of cds, replicating them right down to the artwork and jewel cases, and a 12 year old sharing a lossy compressed version of the songs online?

There is an enormous difference. Organized crime sells the counterfeit copies, keeping all the profit and literally stealing sales from the copyright owners. The 12 year old merely infringes on their temporary monopoly. We've got thirty frickin' posts about "It's not stealing, it's infringment!!!" You come along, doublespeak your way through the same argument, get +5 insightful, and 8 trailing posts that saying "You're right, but they LIED"?? Did you borrow Steve Jobs' RDF this morning or something? Good grief, I wish more people actually understood copyright. This is one of the PRIMARY reasons copyright law is so screwed up. It makes no distinction between the twelve year old fans, and the mobsters with guns.

Go ahead and wow 'em with your next distorted argument. Let me guess, performing a Metallica cover at the amphitheater is the same as singing Happy Birthday at Denny's, right?

Re:Already done

[werelord]

My suggestion for the RIAA is to actually lay off the worrying about piracy, and instead, run an information and advertising campaign informing consumers about how when they buy a used CD, they are in fact ripping off their favorite artist.

I knew I had heard this before; Music industry has already tried to go after the used CD sales.. Old article here but still relevant.. Don't remember how this turned out tho..

Cartel accounting

[Anonymous Coward]

The article does a good job of exposing the fraudsters.

But I believe he missed the bigger story. Filesharing is evil, and Congress is knee deep in artist royalty monies used to give total legislative control to the entertainment cartel lawyers so that they themselves can write the legislation and issue talking points to the Congressmen/women who have trouble finding their dentures and canes in the morning.

The bigger headline, is how the accounting fraud, and specifically these numbers are probably being used to cheat artists out of royalties for their work.

The author screwed up his example by reversing his numbers. A better example would be to show 1000 shipments in 2002, 800 sales, then in 2003, 800 shipments and 800 sales, and they get to report 20% loss in shipments, 20% less royalty payments, and still get the same revenue. And with the lower royalty payments, they actually make a higher profit.

They can do this for years, then when the numbers start to get tight, they can change the measurement, until they can rejig the numbers.

And let's not forget that it's also profitable to "forget" to pay some royalties as well.

As long as you have Congress in your pocket...

so this goes on and on and .....

[Anonymous Coward]

I have read through the posts so far, and a considerble number of the posts made on the subject before and a lot of the analogies come close, but don't hit the heart of it for me.

Here is the way it is for me.

Many years ago (I don't know how many - google it yourself if you're interested), Natalie Imbruglia came out with a song called Torn. I have listened to this song so many times I can almost repeat every note she sings, AND every note the rest of the band plays.

This song ranks among my top 10 all-time favorite songs. It fucking gives me goose bumps on occasion when I listen to it, just because of the way she uses her voice. On the basis of this one song, I am ready to claim that she has a vocal talent worthy of note (even if....(see rest of post)).

So, when all these p2p networks started springing up, I checked into them, in the interest of deciding which CD's would be worthy of MY hard earned dollars. Natalie was my first test case.

My purpose for this was not to download mp3's (at least in the final stage). I happen to like a lot of music where even the tinniest ear can detect the difference between formats. I certainly can. My purpose (as far as Natilie was concerned) was to see if there was enough of her other stuff I liked to purchase a CD of hers. This was the first time I used a P2P network. (I get my porn elsewhere.....tttthhhhhuuuuuppppppttttt).

Not a chance (so far..... I understand she is working on a third alblum).

She seems to be techno-pop, a genre I'm not all that interested in, but I downloaded all of the songs off of the two released CD's I could find of her for sampling.

Conclusion: I still think Torn may be one of the best songs ever written - as it was performed by Natalie. One of these days I will get around to seeing if she wrote it, or it was done by committee and she was only the performing artist. It doesn't really matter to me.

BECAUSE: I found (so far at least) that this is the only song of hers I like. I don't know if the one song was in line with her normal fare and I just can't appreciate the rest of her music - or this is a fluke and the only good song she did.

For the purpose of discussion, it doesn't really matter. What mattered to me was with the availabilty of downloadable mp3's, I SAVED at least 20 dollars because I didn't buy either of her CD's for ONE FUCKING SONG.

I've got more than a few years in me still but I ain't exactly young. Like many, over those years I have purchased LP's, 8-tracks, and cassettes of whole alblums because there was one or two songs on it I liked.

Those days ended long ago.

(okay, about 1975, when I had to start earning my own money).

In the last five years I have purchased two CD's. Alice Cooper - Welcome to My Nightmare, and Black Sabbath - We Sold our Soul for Rock and Roll. As you can see, Natalie isn't exactly my normal fare. For these two CD's I payed what I considered to be an equitable price. $7.99 and $5.99 respectively.

So maybe the RIAA counts the two Natalie Imbruglia CD's as lost sales, because I didn't buy at that time without listening to them first. If so, well.... everyone else has expressed an opinion on this many times that pretty much coincides with mine, but maybe for different reasons.

I don't buy ANYTHING now without listening to it first. Either I listen to it at the local library, the local Borders, or borrow it from someone I know who has it. If I don't like more than one or two songs on a CD, then there isn't a chance in hell I will buy it. If there is a song I really like, I may rip a copy of it off a friends CD, but this is not a lost sale, because I WILL NEVER BUY THE FUCKING CD AT FULL PRICE to begin with. I will wait until I can get it at the local Salvation Army for $0.25.

And that's the way it is.

To the RIAA: Deal with it fuckers. In the last 10 years you've managed to produce about 6 songs I like. Not exactly an exemplary sales position, is it.

Re:so this goes on and on and .....

[Hitchcock_Blonde]

You actually think "Torn" is one of the best song ever written? Then you go on to mention the classic WTMN by AC? There has to be some kind of law against that.

Re:so this goes on and on and .....

[Anonymous Coward]

Okay, being even more inebriated now than I was an hour ago, I will attemp to reply to this.

Perhaps I misspoke myself. On further bemused consideration, it isn't the lyrics of the song that are all that great. It is possible that even my humble writing talents (shut the fuck up..you know who) could produce the lyrics for this song.

But that song has a certain quality that is lacking from many songs, including many of the other songs I like.

Perhaps the credit should go to the sound engineers or the....well whoever else contributed to the song. I don't know.

My point was that this is the only song of her's I like. I like it so much that it's scary.

But it's the only song of her's I like.

On the other hand, AC-WTMN is one of the 6 cd's I carry in my car. If I'm driving, I have one of those 6 cd's playing. Which one depends upon my mood. Alice ranks in my upper 5%. I'm not all that much younger than he is, and I've been listening to him for as long as I can remember.

I don't know if he has any experience with a lot of the stuff he sings about.

But I do. Entirely too much. And while many people only see the ... I don't know, call it the showmanship - I have been through many of the cycles he sings about.

(Some of the best times of my life I might add).

So: It comes down to the basics. I really like one song by Natalie Imbruglia. I think it's a kick ass song or performance, however you would like to credit it. But I haven't paid a penny to listen to her yet.

Eventually though, I will own everything by Alice Cooper I can get my hands on, because I like pretty much everything he does. I think he may be one of the most talented performers in the last 40 years.

Think about it.

And my money does back up my opinions.

Always.

(sacmog)

Re:so this goes on and on and .....

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought that CD, you insensitive clod. I wish I'd discovered p2p beforehand, IMHO "Torn" is her only good song :(

On the other hand, mp3's have accounted for numerous CD purchases in the Napster days (e.g., Tantric, downloaded a few songs, bought the CD). It's unfortunate that these cases are lost amid the "pirate!!" rants RIAA puts forward.

Oh well, back to iTunes. Here's hoping RIAA becomes (even more?) obsolete in the near term.

What about vinyl

[Suburbanpride]

I wonder if tapes or vinyl are counted...

I am a music geek and all the music I buy is pretty much vinyl. claiming "fair use" I download stuff to my ipod so I can listen to it in the car. I only buy CD's when it is stuff that I can't get on vinyl and can't find it to download. In the past year I've bought about 15 records and 4 cd's.
Not a single CD was an RIAA disc, and maybe 2 records were.
Prior to having a cd-burner/broadband, I would buy about 20 cd's a year, and about 1/3 third of those were purchased used.

Almost all independent labels worth their salt put their stuff out on vinyl. My favorites are Fat Wreck Chords, Jade Tree, and Springman.
You can also find mainstream stuff on vinyl. Recently I've picked up System of a Down, Radiohead and Sublime.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart of course, don't carry vinyl and they sell their cd's at pretty close to cost. The make it up by selling you CD players, and batteries to run your CD player. I buy most of my music at independent retailers like Amoeba Music or online. Most Independent labels sell full length records and cd's for $8-12.
Call me a thief(I have 50 gigs of mp3s), but I feel like I have supported artists who deserve it. I will never pay $18 or even $15 for a cd.

RIAA shenanigans

[NailedSaviour]

Just another reason to add to my list why i will never buy another piece of music again, regardless of whether the deal the RIAA has sealed with Satan expires and the organisation is taken over by Jesus H. Christ himself. It's not like they will miss my monetary input, I haven't bought a CD since 1998 or so, but it's indicative of how irrelevant the organisation has become.

Whohow!

[trezor]

• And now it turns out that the RIAA's claims may be based on a lie?!!

Again? Pigs must be flying in flocks these days!

A better analogy

[freakmn]

Let's say I'm a big fan of the mona lisa. I am also a college student that has very little spending money. The mona lisa is up for sale for say $1 billion. I see it at an auction, and I take a picture of it with my 35mm camera. The picture is lower quality, but good enough for me. Now, did I rip the seller off of $1 billion? Of course not! Is their original, high quality copy going to be worth less because of me? I don't think so! So would the seller be justified in suing me? I sure hope not!

Not lieing, just proffesional assholeing

[trezor]

So you are saying that omiting vital information to distort the picture to give an impression exactly opposite how things really are, really isn't lieing.

You're probably right. If I lead people to believe something that clearly isn't true, based on subjective selection of information, but not telling anything provably wrong, it can't be lieing.

You're just being an asshole with an agenda. This is normal. However, I have a serious beef when people like this has govermental influence.

Call me naive, but I'd like to think that things haven't allways been this bad.

Oh! And feel free to suggest laws against this kinda trickery though. But that would probably backfire on Mr. Bush, so he'll probably be against it.

/ducks

Re:Another shocking fact

[deimtee]

I'm using a Windows machine at the moment because I'm not near my own computer, and I can't exactly put Linux on someone else's computer.

Knoppix.

as a foreigner...

[tormentae agent]

...something about grandmothers making toys called "Cabbage Patch Kids" created a peculiar image.

So what if their labels are losing sales?

[krinsh]

I buy a lot more overseas and independent labels now than I ever did; and it's more due to internet radio and maturity than anything else... OMG OMG OMG they'll be going after streaming radio next... and making me take pills that turn me back into a kid??

Oh, but they are useful numbers

[nurb432]

They help the RIAA's cause to clamp down on their customers rights and make them appear to be 'just protecting their musicians'

Just another fraud in big business, go figure. They are all corrupt to the core.

Re:Oh, but they are useful numbers

[nanojath]

More and more I'm starting to wonder if an equally important factor of this is the music industry using this "piracy is killing us" excuse to justify lackluster financial performance. When you consider the markup between the commodity and the retail price, the fact that they've been convicted of price-fixing (meaning for a long time they were not even having to deal with genuine market dynamics affecting their pricing), if the "piracy" complaint is bull then there's really no excuse for them. It's vilify the dirty pirates or admit to gross incompetence. Rather than figure out how to do business properly (hint, utilize new communications technologies to figure out what's worth magaproducing rather than blowing billions on thousands of non-starters to find the one superstar, for example) they're cooking up a business model that screws the consumer even harder: my personal belief (and I've been saying this for years now) is the cherished dream of the biz is to eventually create a system where you are NEVER allowed to "own" the data comprising copyrighted material - just to "rent" it for a single use from their databases, over and over and over and over...

zero

[tormentae agent]

...is exactly what the phrase "intellectual property" means. Honestly: Who can own a meme?

"Help" quote

[miller701]

"MIT was after me, you know. Wanted me to rule the world for them." - Help! (the Beatles movie)

Wouldn't that be MI3, the British Spy agency?

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to be able to go to a store and pick up a USB memory stick with an album on it, instead of a CD.

Re:It's not something we can ever get hard numbers

[Yewbert]

Not specifically a reply to your post, . . . but I haven't yet seen anyone point out that, well, aren't the numbers on which the RIAA are basing their sales-loss claims merely (some convoluted form of) sales of albums released by RIAA labels only? This is most certainly not the sum-total of all albums released in this country.

http://www.magnetbox.com/riaa/

http://www.boycott-riaa.com/membership

http://www.srcf.ucam.org/fair-music/

...and plenty of other sites (just Google for "non-RIAA record labels") not only provide lists of labels that aren't part of the RIAA mob, but exhort boycotting the ones that are.

Back to my point - isn't it more likely all the time that, yes, the RIAA's sales may be down, but it may be at least in part because the popularity of non-RIAA music has grown, taking their sales down the good old-fashioned, legal capitalistic way?

Hell's bells, even Newsweek is at least partly hip to this - there's an article in this week's issue ( http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4933394/ ) about how much more popular indie bands (more commonly non-RIAA, needless to say) are becoming. Yeah, so some of the bands they mention - Flaming Lips, etc., - are major-label, but the trend they're pointing out is that online sharing has enabled these indies to get the word out and generate sales without going through a major label and its marketing machine, and also that the deluge of information available has made the indie musos more hip to the scumbaggery of the major labels in the first place, and so less likely to cave in and sign a contract with one.

Useful numbers

[Craig Maloney]

Maybe I'm just being jaded, but I'm wondering if the more accurate numbers would be the number of dissolved nasal septums of record executives from a certain sniffing habit.

Politics as Usual

[stuffduff]

The RIAA must have used the same research firm that helped Dub-yah miss global warming.

Re:"Help" quote

[Nasarius]

You're thinking of MI5, I believe. That would make the quote a lot less funny. :-)

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[Nasarius]

You keep treating your CDs like shit, they will become shit. No surprise there. Moron.

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[PMuse]

It's an amazing mindset: "I deserve to enjoy my past revenues plus a growth rate -- if for any reason I don't receive that, then some one must be stealing from me."

This time, they didn't get their revenues because their retailers learned not to purchase inventory in excess of (rising) demand. Last time, people decreased entertainment spending and bought less in a bad economy. Next time, online download sales (for which they're paid) will have risen so high that they visibly reduce CD sales.

No matter what happens, they blame "piracy". They might as well just call it "witchcraft" and start trying people for practicing black magic. Oh wait, . . .

Is it a lost sale if they no longer sell singles?

[Anonymous Coward]

If I hear a song on the radio, and it's real catchy... and I go and download it for free. How is it a lost sale considering that most labels no longer sell CD singles? Do they account 1 lost sale of an entire album containing that 1 song? Shouldn't it be pro-rated based on the total number of tracks on the album?

And even if they have CD singles... they usually are packed with a bunch of other tracks I don't want, in order to justify a higher price tag. My 1 song download... is it a lost sale of that entire CD? I think not!

The RIAA's Entire Mentality Is Full Of It

[bsands]

It's interesting how this whole thing started with the RIAA saying that consumers only own the "license" to listen to the music they purchase. According to them, the media doesn't matter. Using that logic, why I can't I return my scratched CD for a new media? If a CD is lost or stolen, why can't I mail someone a receipt and get a new disk since I own the license to the music? Why can't I convert my tape collection to CD for free. I OWN the license don't I? Its so hypocritical.

How can I feel sorry for their plight? Most music that I download consists of CD's or tapes which I own and are scratched; or owned at one time where it was lost or stolen.

If the music industry wants find out why sales are down (if what they say is even true) they should look no further than the crappy products that are hitting the shelves. There is only so much Britney Spears and candy ass boy bands the world can handle. Where is the quality music? Where are the artist that can actually play a instrument? Most of us are getting sick of listening to so called musicians who are nothing without producers, talented audio techs, and a drum kit.

Re:Another shocking fact

[0x0d0a]

Knoppix is not a great solution for serious use; I think it's wonderful for troubleshooting and hope that it stays around, but the inability to update software and the like is a pain in the ass.

Re:Mods? +5 WTF? There's a HUGE difference.

[Frizzle Fry]

You mean to tell me you see no difference in organized crime pressing counterfeit copies of cds, replicating them right down to the artwork and jewel cases, and a 12 year old sharing a lossy compressed version of the songs online?

No, I don't mean to tell you that. I didn't say anything similar to that. You have only constructed that by taking a quote from my post way, way out of context. As a general rule, if someone says something like "I don't think it matters", you need to take into consideration what the "it" is that's being discussed.

If the story was about them going after a twelve year old the same way they go after organized crime, and the twelve year old getting similar penalties, then everything you say would be legitimate. But that's not the story we're discussing. Did you look at the story? What happened is that the RIAA apparently gave misleading figures about how much piracy as an aggregate costs them. And I said that how much piracy as an aggregate costs should not be the deciding factor in what laws we pass. Instead, we should only consider whether people should have the right to copy things or not, and in what circumstances. If that results in certain people gaining or losing money, then so be it.

To interpret that statement as profit not mattering when considering individual crimes (or non-crimes) is truly impressive. It's as if you ignored the story, ignored the headline, ignored every other post and just read mine.

Other ways too...

[Merk]

Well there are other ways that copyright infringement is like real theft. For instance, if you altered the song, or distributed a fake version pretending it was real, and ended up making people think the original was awful, then you'd be damaging the song's owner. This is like libel/slander.

But, there's still a fundamental difference between that and theft. Even identity theft is a misapplied label. It's not that when someone 'steals your identity' that you no longer have one, it just means that it's no longer unique. It has been diluted. Identity theft would be when someone steals your identity and you no longer have one -- they are the new 'Clint Eastwood', to use your example.

the bigger the company the thinner the inventory

[garyrich]

At the top of the pile is Wal-Mart, with the thinnest inventory on hand and the highest rate of inventory turns. The mom and pop store keeps (relatively) more inventory since 1) they know less about upcoming demand than the big boys and 2) they are less willing to dissapoint customers by not having what the customer needs. Small retailers need their customers more than mega stores do.

If you supply product to the Wal-Marts of the world (from actual stuff on shelves to the guy that contracts to sweep the parking lot) they will put you under intense pressure to minimize your own inventory by constantly grinding for every penny of price. When you have cut out all possible costs for them they will still come back month and grind some more. If you want to continue as a supplier you will be forced to cut wages/benefits to your employees and/or offsouce everything possible to China to cut costs. If you won't - you will be replaced by a supplier that will.

actually...

[Kedyn's Crow]

The first time I heard of this inventory model being used is when they constructed the Empire State Building back in the 20's. Because they were building in the middle of the city they didn't have room to store inventory and so they simply had to use the Just In Time system.

Re:It's not something we can ever get hard numbers

[silicon not in the v]

I know that their prices are too high. I know that music piracy is cutting into their profits some, but not as much as they make it out to be. I know that if CDs were priced at $5 or whatever, many P2P downloaders say they would buy instead, but would they? Or would they say it's still too high, or just buy the one every other month that they really really want, while downloading three or four others?

There is such a large outcry that the RIAA should change their business model, and until they do, they're forcing you to download free instead--yeah, right. There are some of you that have the correct idea with recommendations to boycott (that means don't USE as well as don't buy) RIAA or to support indie bands instead. For the unauthorized P2P downloaders, though, you have no right to claim any moral high ground when you will not do without the product as part of your protest. Listen to the music you have instead of "acquiring" new, or if there's a new song you really like, buy that track from iTunes.

If you want to protest them, but do the right thing, cut your music consumption. If P2P downloading of their music decreases, and they still only get a few dollars a year from each person by buying individual tracks, they will get the message. (Not that they will honestly present message in the media, though)

Figures a LITTLE off?

[FewClues]

In a not-so-surprising twist of the tables, RIAA reporting of 'losses' is a little bit off. Is anyone seriously surprised that lawyers would lie to us? I do my shopping on line to the extent possible because it's convenient and cost effective. Depending on the size of the orders I may or may not pay shipping - but I never pay the 8.5% tax which is always more than shipping.

Re:1900s called, they want your business model bac

[silicon not in the v]

Bottom line, it's going to get worse for the RIAA. They profit from the wastes in the system, and the system just keeps getting better at not buying things that can't be sold to consumers...

So here's an interesting thought: In these last hard economic times almost every large business or company in this country has had to do some layoffs because of losses--sometimes very steep losses. They have had to make cutbacks in services, salaries, and/or workforce to keep alive. I haven't heard of the record labels or RIAA making any cutbacks. Their PROFITS start going down a little, and listen to them whine! No mention of, "We're going to have to tighten our belts." Instead it's all someone else's fault, and it's apparently totally unacceptable that they might not make as much money when their customers are losing their jobs and livlihood.

And I had thought that....

[Anonymous Coward]

the losses of RIAA was due to them overpayi.. erm over-sponsoring the senators and congressmen..

Re:Another shocking fact

[drinkypoo]

What could be easier than burning a new CD? The part where software is installed is write-only so it's going to be hard to root it.

Re:Another shocking fact

[0x0d0a]

...I'm not saying that there's no merit, but not being able to easily write to the CD with updates is not a trivial issue, and having to rewrite new CDs is a bit of a pain (and would require at least some scripting if you wanted this to be reasonably low-effort). I'm not willing to go through that degree of effort for a relatively slow copy of Linux when all I'm doing is web browsing -- the Windows version of Firefox hardly differs that much from the Linux version.

Now, if I were writing software or something, then things might be different.

Re:It's not something we can ever get hard numbers

[Morosoph]

I know that their prices are too high. I know that music piracy is cutting into their profits some, but not as much as they make it out to be. I know that if CDs were priced at $5 or whatever, many P2P downloaders say they would buy instead, but would they? Or would they say it's still too high, or just buy the one every other month that they really really want, while downloading three or four others?

They might but more stuff as they do as well as continuing to download, but I suspect that the labels have in fact judged the price-point correctly for maximising their profits, so I doubt that the demand would increase by enough to render them the profits that they're used to. The artists might get a better deal, 'though: direct distribution is more feasible, so they're likely to end up with a larger slice of the remaining pie. Whether it's more or less in total is, of course, a matter of speculation, and maybe some reseach; how much do they get out of cheaper CDs at the moment?

Behold! The MTV Effect

[api]

Unless you lived in an elevator or beneath a secretary's desk, you may recall that the record industry was going nowhere until MTV arrived and introduced millions of viewers/listeners to hundreds of new acts. None of those listeners paid $0.99 to MTV per song (never seen the math based on a cable bill, though) but millions of those listeners ran out and plunked down $16 or so for a sparkling-new CD or relatively-new cassette. MTV+Sony Walkman+CD = Revived music industry. Internet+Apple iPod+IMS = Potential to re-revive music industry.

The music industry, like all collective monopolies, is terrified of disruptive technologies/innovation, even if the pay-off is beyond their wildest dreams. Very simply, they fear that the pay-off will be to SOMEONE ELSE like say... a computer company with tiny but loyal market share.

Watch for FUD, followed by lawsuits, followed by hostile takeover attempts, followed by legitimate offers with tail between legs. Repeat when next innovation comes. Kaut kas tam lidzigs...

MD.

Re:Lies, marketing...

[Anonymous Coward]

the assfuck who did just got meta modded unfair