P2P Bits

yohaas writes "Two Op-Ed stories today in the NY Times address music sharing. In one Kembrew McLeod says that the lawsuits aren't working and gives some alternate suggestions. In the other Harvard Law professor William Fisher says that the industry is going about the situation in the wrong way, concluding that 'the record industry's response to file sharing--trying to block the technology altogether--would generate the worst of all possible results'. Neither article is comprehensive, but they are good read nonetheless." Reader Brill Pappin points out that Canadians aren't afraid of the music industry. And reader The Importance of Being Earnest writes "The INDUCE Act, which would make it a crime to 'induce' copyright infringement, such as by inventing things like the Betamax, has finally been officially introduced. The bill has been renamed the Inducing Infringement of Copyrights Act [PDF]. In addition to the name change, there has been another slight modication: 'counsel' is no longer part of the proposed statute. Here is a line-by-line refutation of Hatch's introduction [PDF] to the Act. EFF has shown how broad the Act is by writing a mock lawsuit [PDF] suing Apple (for making the iPod), C|Net (for reviewing the iPod), and Toshiba (for supplying hard drives for iPods). Previous Slashdot coverage here."

Comments

Canada not afraid

[jeepee]

Pretty logic Canadians are not afraid....
File sharing is legal here...

http://news.com.com/2100-1027-5182641.html

Re:Canada not afraid

[Otter]

In the Canadians' defense, aren't they already paying a surcharge on recordable media and MP3 players to the music industry? It seems unfair to preemptively tax them for copyright infringement and then complain when they infringe.

Read the fake suit ... then write your Senator

[Random BedHead Ed]

This lawsuit is creepy, but extremely plausible. After reading so much Grooklaw recently I felt like I was reading a real lawsuit. Time to write our senators this weekend. Find your senators here:

http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/ senators_cfm.cfm

And the EFF's action item on this, complete with a sample letter, is here.

We should all make a habit of this - I personally don't write these people often enough.

Suing Makers of MP3 Players

[CHaN_316]

EFF has shown how broad the Act is by writing a mock lawsuit [PDF] suing Apple (for making the iPod)

Ummm...that's not too far from reality. The RIAA tried to sue Rio for making MP3 players in the late 90's. I refer you to this wired article.

Leahy and Frist's comments about the bill

[pridkett]

Please note, this isn't just a one sided issue. This bill also has it's cosponors Bill Frist (Senate Majority Leader) and Tom Daschle (Senate Minority Leader). We have to call our Senators NOW to stop this.

Also of interest, might be the comments made by Senator Leahy (D-VT) and Senator Frist (R-TN). I've got the entire senate discussion of the bill available on my web page. You should read it and the EFF's rebuttal before calling your senator.

Take action now and we can kill this before it ruins innovation.

Re:Funny timing

[I8TheWorm]

I imagine some cost less, some cost more, but that $250,000 was from real experience.

I played with a band that now has 5 CD out independantly. Earlier in their career, they signed a contract with RCA to put their first CD out. They had their own tunes, but RCA demanded they use some "canned hits" as well, and they were wrestled down to only 4 originals on the CD. During recording, the label began catering sessions from restaurants like Sunset Grill (a non-cheap restaurant in Nashville) and the like. Once this band finally realized the catering wasn't free to them, they had it stopped. Then the cost of studio musicians came into play. Added to that, the producer had to find (at the label/band's expense) some obscure rare microphone for just one song, which halted production. Of course, hotels aren't free for the couple of days that you're not working in the studio. When I was a session bassist in Nashville, I was $50 per song, which is scale to the AFM. However, Michael Rhodes, Mike Brignardello, Glen Worf etc... are more like $300 per song. There are other useless extravagent expenses the label throws in, and there's wasted time spent by the label's hand picked producer, all adding to the cost of production. For this particular band, it came out to $250,000.

The saddest part is after wasting all that money, the label shelved the completed project, not wanting to spend the money on marketing. In reality, they could've had the same quality with $50,000 in the studio, and had $200,000 left over for marketing... or a novel idea, spent less on marketing and having done so, spent less on the project as a whole. But the labels like their model of wasting money on 95% of the artists while 5% of them make the $$ to fund the rest. Anything different would be admitting that the labels have no clue what listeners want, and the Billy Gillman's of the world would never happen.

Re:You US'ians sure have a twisted law system

[Hatta]

How is this funny? We need to be talking about revolution, and we need to be talking about it now.