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RIAA Co-Opts More Universities
southpolesammy writes "The Register reports that six more US Universities and colleges have agreed to enter into protection schemes with the RIAA. In short, several institutions have signed deals with the RIAA's lapdog, the Napster music service, to 'goad these schools toward becoming music brokers'. The underlying threat of being sued by the RIAA if they don't pay them off is almost certainly the driving force behind their acceptance of this scheme. And of course, there's the ever-present gag order they'll probably enforce on these new universities as well. Great business model guys. Way to engender yourselves to your biggest customer base."
I'll do many things, but engendering myself with the RIAA is not one of them.
en*gen*der ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-jndr)
v. en*gen*dered, en*gen*der*ing, en*gen*ders
v. tr.
To bring into existence; give rise to: "Every cloud engenders not a storm" (Shakespeare).
To procreate; propagate.
v. intr.
To come into existence; originate.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
For fun trivia, Which "slash-and-burn" Sherman was more agressive... (A) --or-- (B)?
Sigs cause cancer.
Call me a troll if you want, but it's at least good to see the RIAA trying to have dealings with a college or university that aren't purely legal! Yes, I know that some will say that the institutions were pressured on pain of lawsuits, but has that been confirmed?
I always save my last mod point to mod up a good troll. You people are too serious.
First off, let me make something crystal clear up-front. I in no way condone the way that the RIAA
has tried to unethically shape our legal landscape, much less the shadier tactics they've employed.
They're scum, no question about it.
However, the other side of the equation is almost pathological. While you have many honest people who simply want to defend their Fair Use rights, you also have a loud, vocal "I want I want I want" community who simply believes that it is eeeee-vil that they should ever have to pay for goods (cds) or services.
there has to be some sort of compromise between the two, and I honestly think this is a first, halting step in the right direction. I don't think much of napster, but I believe that if a university sponsored the use of a service such as Real's Rhapsody service which allowed unlimited streaming (as opposed to a mandatory $X a song) of music, it would be a good compromise between the two posistions. People would have access to a large library of music, and the artists would be recieving compensation.
Hell, if nothing else, the sponsorship of such a program may well help to diminish any credible claims that the RIAA has to push through bizarre and draconian laws.
Sounds like mafia tactics to me.
"Pay up, and we'll make sure no unfortunate accidents happen to you..."
Perhaps the university officials received threats of being SNIPPED and GUNNED down...
Shades of Grayden
Six more US Universities and colleges have announced another round of tuition increases. Hope you're saving for your child's education, ....even if you don't have a child yet.
..Can't the RIAA, MPAA, and everyone else just realize that there is an efficient medium for distributing music, movies, and any other digital/converted to digital media, and WORK WITH IT? They're barking up a dying tree here. People will find better, more secure ways to transfer music/movies over the net, these associations need to embrace these technological advances and come up with an updated business model for them to profit off of.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
is if the RIAA would give students a choice in the matter, instead of forcing Napster down their throats(who knows, maybe someone up there really loves irony) ie you could give me:
a) a reduced Napster subscription price
b) a reduced price on iTunes songs or
c) a free "I None of these would have to be paid for from univerisity funds(I'm from Penn State, I still wonder where our mysterious funding comes from), it would give the users a choice, and the RIAA could still make boatloads of money.
Gah, people who think they have some sort of inate right to music piss me off, but not nearly as much as the RIAA....
Sure would hate to see anything happen to it!
RIAA just hit their highest sales, despite these mobster tactics.
lying bastards.
Students: What happen?
Universities: Somebody set up us the RIAA contract.
Universities: We just watch you.
Students: What!
Universities: Main screen turn on.
Students: It's You!!
RIAA: How are you thieving punks!!
RIAA: All your schools are belong to us.
RIAA: Your rights are on the way to destruction.
Students: What you say!!
RIAA: Your rights have no chance to survive make your time.
RIAA: HA HA HA HA!
RIAA: Your ass is mine
Students: You know what you doing.
RIAA: Landsharks, engage
Students: For great justice.
(Wonders how many time the same joke can be milked for.)
And while he'll be paying the costs of this, he certainly won't be getting any benefits from it, since he has a mac... which means, no napster...
I wonder exactly how much student outrage would have to happen before the universities break down and withdraw from the napstery thing...
I certainly would have thought more of CORNELL, of all places, at least...
The RIAA is preying on the lawsuit fears of universities in an attempt to gain a captive market of students that are forced to have Napster whether they want it or not.
Personally, I love streaming music. My stereo at home is connected to my PC, which is always connected to the net. On Rhapsody I can play nearly every album I've ever owned or wanted to listen to, for a flat monthly fee.
The best thing about unlimited streaming is that I can listen to albums which I would probably never buy, or even take the time to borrow or copy. When someone says 'hey, listen to this band' I can check them out right away, for no extra money.
People buy bottled water.
Other music services should sue for anticompetitive behaviour, probably the source of the gag order on each contract.
. . . that state universities and private, but tax-exempt, schools are able to keep these contracts secret?
Call (206) 338-5780 COLLECT for information about a genuine BA, BS, MA, MS, MBA, or Ph.D.
"Oh no! Another $30 per year (if you read the article) in order to download all the free music you want for four years?"
Only the music that *they* want you to hear, not all the music you want.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
It's a terrific business model, what are you talking about? You think they don't understand that it's an implied threat? Why else would a university bite? Of course they know it's a threat, and they don't care if you think it's sleazy, what they do care about is how much of a threat the universities think it is. Damn right it's a threat, do you think anyone would pay them otherwise? It's a fine business model in a world where "business ethics" is not about "ethics" but what you can legally get away with.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
If a consortion of universities got together and fought this RIAA pressure would they be able to win? Remember the RIAA has never successfully prosecuted someone for offering music or providing network bandwidth unless this party had a commercial interest in the activity e.g. selling copies rather than sharing with friends (this is to the best of my knowledge). The black and white of the copyright laws say that the person making the copies is the one liable . . . wouldn't this be individual students? And not the university.
For example a public library is not liable for copyright infringement if someone photocopies a whole book on their photocopy machine. The person making the copies is the legally responsible party. This is exactly why photocopiers are now mostly self service in libraries (and even Kinkos). Because then the owner of the machine is not liable . . . wouldn't this work for universities? The owner of the machine (in this case the network) would not be liable for the actions of the people that used the machine (the individuals that are copying the music). Thus individual students would have to be prosecuted, not the university.
Assuming all this is true, I would hope that some university would stand up and fight the RIAA rather than rolling over and becoming the RIAA's B****.
2004-06-11 01:49:15 RIAA subpoenas Georgia Tech for student names
According to Georgia Tech's college paper, the Technique, nine Tech students are among the victims of the RIAA's last round of lawsuits. The RIAA has subpoenaed the Office of Information Technology (OIT) to release the identities of individuals who were using computers at specific network addresses identified as being the sources of large amounts of file sharing. Tech has indicated they intend to comply with the subpoenas. According to Randy Nordin, Tech's chief legal advisor, the RIAA has asked that he tell the students to contact their attorney to see if an out of court settlement can be reached. The deadline to comply was June 2. In the past, violation of the school's Computer and Network Usage Policy, would've resulted in disabling the student's Internet access until the student matter was sorted out with the OIT or the Dean of Student's office.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Can we please dub the new "Napster" as something else? This isn't the original / real napster, this is big biz cashing in on an old popular (and more respectable) name. At least call them "Napster II" or something. Let's not let them tarnish a once noble name.
This sig intentionally left blank.
Oh no! Another $30 per year (if you read the article) in order to download all the free music you want for four years?
Acutally, I did read the entire article:
"This is a nice service if holding onto to your tunes is not important. Once their four years at school are over, the students are cut off from Napster and lose all the music they've download. That is unless they pay 99 cents per song or $10 per album to own a permanent download that can be burned onto CDs or MP3 players.
Keep in mind too, that this charge applies to ALL students, not just those that want to download music. And what about those from other countries/cultures that won't find their particular tastes in music on Napster?
The total cost of this is yet to be determined. That's just the price these colleges agreed to for now - who knows what the RIAA will start charging them in a few years, or what will happen if their students find a way to circumvent the Napster, etc, etc, etc...
"Napster offers a unique blend of a name students recognize, a broad music library that appeals to every taste and community features that let you discover new music and share your favorites with friends...."
Ah, but you can only share them with friends that are also currently enrolled at another one of these universities...:)
I was in the park the other day wondering why frisbees get bigger and bigger the closer they get - and then it hit me.
You forgot the side that endlessly whines about the music industry. Folks, if you don't like the music industry, don't support it, but for fuck's sake, STOP WHINING ABOUT IT. This isn't "News for Music Buyers", and RIAA shit certainly is not "my rights online", or anyone else's.
I care about the fact that I'm unemployed, that my taxes are sky-high(I made below the poverty line a year or two ago, but because I was self-employed, the government wanted HALF of that) and currently funding a war I don't support. To be honest, I don't give a fucking rat's ass about the music industry, and I don't think anyone else here really does either, save the people who post "but if they just did THIS..." Like the rest of the media industry, slashdot greatly overstates the importance of the music industry. If some colleges are too stupid to sue the shit out of the RIAA for racketeering, I couldn't care less. Nevermind it's pure conjecture on both the part of the slash submitter and the register- which is why there hasn't been a lawsuit. Duh.
I had to double-check to see if the article wasn't really posted by Timothy, because it smacked of his boy-who-cried-wolf-about-our-rights-but-it-was-jus t-the-music-industry bullshit. Wake me up when there's a legitimate threat to my rights, or real technology news. Not teenage "I wanna swap music" teenage angst.
Please help metamoderate.
I find it ridiculous that the universities themselves are paying anything to the scumbags. How can anyone even consider the possibility that random schools have anything to do with their students actions, much less have legal responsibility for those actions? Even more amazing is the fact that the universities are making any kinds of contracts for the students. Back here in Europe, their purpose is to provide education, but I guess it's pretty much different in the US, where they are more of a kindergarten than a place of research and study.
Well, I'll have to look at it this way: Schools that I will never apply to or allow my kids to. Schools shouldn't be entering into such rediculous agreements, what does this teach the students...
-- Note: If you don't agree with me, don't bother replying. I won't read it.
So how long until someone writes a program to just save all the streamed music for burnination to CD or use in portables and laptops? Congratulations RIAA! That CD in Sally Student's SUV just net'ed you....I mean the artist....less than 1 cent!
I'm an alumnus of one of the universities mentioned, and I'm writing up a letter to be sent to the President and Board of Trustees. It will express my disappointment in their capitulation to RIAA pressure and negligent misuse of funds, and let them know that as long as this deal is in place, the university will no longer be getting any alumni support from myself, and I will encourage my fellow alumni to do the same.
Napster has no legitimate educational purpose. They can go ahead and waste someone else's money (read: the current student body's) on this worthless and unjustifiable service, but I can make sure they will not be wasting my money on it.
While I may not have used your choice phrasing, I have to agree with your sentiment. It seems to me that all that happens in these situations is a lot of grumbling, a lot of of agreeing with the grumbling, and then a big, fat, nothing, while the RIAA continues to expand its legal control over all things music related.
One thing that I'd like to add, is that the RIAA is a scapegoat. It was created as a shield so that certain unnamed companies who know that their consumers were going to be, for lack of a better term, pissed at their practices, could obfuscate themselves behind a handy acronym. While we're all having a giant tirade about how evil said organization is, we still go out and purchase products from these companies; they have done an absolutely phenomenal job in seperating thier legal heinousity* from their corporate image.
Just something to think about the next time you're bashing Xbox in favor of playstation.
*Yes, I made this word up.
The Sacred Chao says, "MU".
Anybody who has an inkling of interest in tinkering with the possibilities of alternative distribution of media should be thrilled like this. In a few months I'll be launching my first experiment in home-brew DIY music downloading and I'm so thrilled the RIAA will continue to give me regular opportunities to market it by reminding everyone just how stupid and corrupt the current "market" is.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
If you threaten to ' not protect ' someone if they don't pay up, there is no question its illegal.
If you threaten to sue for an illegal act you believe the other party is committing against you unless they agree to get a contract that makes the act legal, I doubt you can legally call that racketeering.. or protection money. It would be called 'giving them a chance to legalize' and would look good in court.. ' see we tried '...
Not that I'm a lawyer or a judge, but logically this is how I would view it being a jury member..
They are still slime however....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
..Can't the RIAA, MPAA, and everyone else just realize that there is an efficient medium for distributing music, movies, and any other digital/converted to digital media, and WORK WITH IT?
You mean P2P? Like Napster?
People will find better, more secure ways to transfer music/movies over the net, these associations need to embrace these technological advances and come up with an updated business model for them to profit off of.
Ah, the "new business model" argument. Isn't that what Napster's pay-for-P2P service is? Isn't that what iTunes is? The days of claiming the record labels aren't embracing these technologies is over. They are. It's the pirates who aren't embracing these technologies.
I wish the article revealed the source of the funds. Many campuses collect a "technology fee" in addition the more general tuition and whatnot. A subset of those univerities actually put a student committee in charge of spending that money.
I suspect that many of those committees would be inclined to spend some of the money to make unlimited music a supported technology. After all, the campus has already collected it. Imagine a handful of 20-year-olds sitting on a pot of a few hundred thousand dollars and deciding between a bulk purchase of Microsoft licenses and unlimited music. Who thinks they are going to go for unlimited copies of Office?
I read in Variety that music recording sales are up 7% from last summer. Hurray for them.
But take into consideration that the target demographic for music sales is growing at more than that rate. Music sales is a young person's game: most buyers of music recordings are between 15 and 25 years old. This is the fastest growing segment of the world's population. Plus incomes are growing in formerly poor and desperate areas of the world. This means that even if the RIAA companies did nothing or completely goofed up their marketing, they would still have the 7% sales growth at least. There are 7% more people in the demographic band than last year.
The fact that record sales are not growing as fast as the demographic band proves that the record company executives are totally incompetent and undeserving of their seven figure compensation packages. Most of the young people who buy CDs live in the third world where they have a choice of paying $25 US for an official CD or $2-3 for a 'pirate' version.
Now the CD industry has NO marginal costs (blank CDs cost $0.05 each in bulk) per additional unit of product sold. That means that the RIAA companies are giving away their most profitable market sector to the pirates by not charging $2-3 per CD disk in the developing countries where the young people of the emerging middle-class don't have a lot of disposable income for music recordings.
The record company executives should all be fired for being too stupid to figure this out or too greedly and inflexible to adjust their business plan to maximize their revenues.
Sueing people in the 'finished development' world (the USA, EU, Japan, Canada, Aus...) is just a side-show to hide the incompetence of the Music dept execs from the head media corporate execs.
The population figures say that global music record industry should be booming with profits in 2004. If it's not, it's not because of file swappers.
Can't we just flag the RIAA as damage and route around them?
/. musicians, submit your work under a Creative Commons licence and sell it somewhere like here or that other one whose name escapes me.
Come on,
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
- You can offer to unNapsterize the music (pop the hd into your box and copy the songs for people who are graduating and don't want to lose what they bought and paid for)
- They (RIAA) can't close the analog hole - stereo patch cord to line in on your box == free non-DRM'ed music
- You can offer song upgrades ("You got that at 96kbps? Hey, I'll upgrade you to 320kbps for a buck, and no DRM) They paid for a defective song - you're just fixing it
:-)
Besides, we're talking universities here - it's not like sneakernet isn't quicker when you want to transfer a dvd's worth of mp3s to your classmates. Napster is already obsolete.Ok, a little rant here.
I was reading a while ago a comment that started to make me think. I don't remember who and when,. but it went something like this:
"Let's say we invent a car replicator that could replicate cars at the cost of raw materials. Car manufacturer would go bankrupt. It would throw of the economy as resources aren't as scarce now, and that's the basis of economy(along with unlimited needs)"
Then a reply:
"But they[car manufacturers] would fight to the death to make this not happend, have it outlawed and destroyed in it's infancy."
Then I started thinking...
Let's go back to the basics. Things cost money because of 2 things:
1) It costs money to produce/sell/ship/etc.
2) Supply and Demands
The economy is based on the fact that a near 0 cost is impossible and that supplies are limited.
However, with the net we see a radical shift about Information(data). Demand is very high and supplies unlimited(you can copy bits at [virtually] no costs.) Any commodity that can be turned into pure data is at 'risk' of this new paradigm. It throws off economy completely.
Is it bad?
Take the car example above... would it be a bad thing for people, us? It sure would be bad for corpos, but us? (ok, bad example, car pollutes and all, more traffic jams, etc...)
Let's say we have machine that replicates food instead, at virtually no cost. It would make all companies producing food to go out of business, so it's going to be really bad for the economy, same as cars. However, is it going to be bad for us, humans? for humanity? Heck, we'd be able to feed everyone at virtually no cost.
Building replicators? Energy replicators/cold fusion? Hell, we'd solve all our problems.
Sure, it's science fiction... unless we're talking about data. With internet and all, costs to replicate and share data is near to nil. We have those sci-fi things in our hands right now, but its restricted to data and information. Is it bad? It's throwing economy off for sure, but in the end, isn't it better this way?
Sure, RIAA and all are in a uproar, and they should be. Since music, movies, games, etc. can all be conveyed using only data and have no material worth, this throws their market off.
I believe we'll have to adapt to this new economy. 'The Information Economy'(TIE, that makes us TIE Fighters... ok, bad pun, couldn't resist =). RIAA and all needs to revise their market and all, they'll need major changes if they want to survive. Market based on information and data will be obselete soon(tm). They'll have to start making actual products to make money.
I don't advocate filesharing of copyrighted materials and all per se, but we won't be able to stop it... and I don't think we should try to stop it. Information wants to be free. It sucks that music, movies, games, etc. are *all* data, but it's not humanity's fault, and certainly not OUR fault. why should we pay for people who based their revenu on information that can now be copied at virtually no cost?
Information is free because it doesn't fit in the whole 'economy' we created. What should we do, fight it? Embrace it? Makes you think, doesn't it?
I say, let's do what's best for us, humans, in the long run, and not corpos that will come and go.
Then again, that's my somewhat socialist view of the whole thing, so YMMV =)
That's a grand total of eight schools in the last nine months that have agreed to become music vendors and pay an RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) tax to avoid lawsuits against their students.
So what they're saying is: We, the all knowing and clairvoyant, RIAA know ahead of time some of your students will be guilty. We can't catch them all, but if you pay in advance, we won't sue you?
I thought organized crime was illegal? How is this any differenct from making sure some "guys" won't come along and burn down your house as long as you pay a "protection fee"?
How is this different from racketeering? Seriously; is it just that the forces involved have accountants that seperates them from the mob, or is it more that the mob will *only* break your knees, so that you can at least pay them back for services rendered...
Not a troll. I'm just curious about how this "protection money" and such is not being jumped all over. I'm sure that I'm just seeing one side of this, but it - to me - appears to be an execution of a more strong-arm agenda.
It would make all companies producing food to go out of business, so it's going to be really bad for the economy
:D
I would just like to point out that we already have what almost amounts to "food replicators" - industrial scale farming.
Farming used to account for approximately 100% of employment. The advent of modern industrial scale farming has resulted in the eliminated of about 98% of all agricultural employment. 98%! That's a staggering figure! We have all seen just how "bad for the economy" that turned out
But back to the music industry...
The advent of the internet makes the publishing industry obsolete. Anyone who uses P2P essentiale becomes a publisher/distributor. It eliminates the wasteful need to pay some middleman/publisher for doing something that no longer needs to be done. P2P however has no effect on the need to create such works in the first place. To put things into perspective, once you trim off the 90% fat leeched off by the RIAA, it would only take about $4 per person per year to fully fund the actual artists making the music and to pay them just as much as they get now. $4 per year, a trivial sum. However the publishing industry will fight tooth and nail to sabotage any attempt to get money to the artists while bypassing the publishing industry.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Read Karl Marx's Kapital -- specifically "The Labor Theory of Value". He architects beautifully the argument you just made.