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Suing Your Customers a Good Idea?
VB writes "Boycott-RIAA is running Fred von Lohmann's article which looks like the ideal answer to solving the P2P problem. He suggests setting up a payment system similar to SESAC, ASCAP, and BMI, collecting organizations for songwriters. This seems such an obvious solution and a great way to get artists paid and give listeners the right to listen to their favorite songs cheaply and keep them out of jail. Why wouldn't this work?"
Because then the RIAA would not have control. Since when was this all about money?
doesn't allow the maximum of money to be squeezed out of the punter, and thus will be fought tooth and nail by the guys who are in charge of the "industry" - the RIAA et al. as opposed to the artists.
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There is a reason that this sort of payment system is ludicrous. The recording industry already gets federal subsidies from our taxes to compensate them for the "inevitable" acts of copyright violation that every citizen already commits. Their lobby convinced the politicians that everyone is a pirate and the only way to stop it is to have the government reimburse them for it. They are already getting paid by us once; they shouldn't get to put their hand in the cookie jar a second time. As far as I'm concerned my taxes have already paid for any and all copyright violations, which gives me the legal right to do as I damn well please with p2p software.
Because lots and lots and lots of people are now used to getting music for free. They don't care enough about the artists to pay for it now, why would that change?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
I had a lot of things I wanted to say about this, but you've summarized it so concisely.
The problem with the system of paying artists directly is that the people with the money in the middle that want to make a lot of money by leveraging a small investment (the artist) in order to harvest a large return (from the consumers, the masses, etc.) are not involved. And the problem with that, of course, is that the people with the money are also the people with influence and power in high places that can lobby and get laws passed to ensure that they continue to enjoy the ability to reap profits by acting as gatekeepers between the people and the things they want. As long as they keep control of that, they will make money.
Ultimately, that's the sinister nature of the RIAA companies. But keep in mind that corporations exist for the purpose of making money. And there's no better way of making money and lots of it, and easily, by using these techniques to fully exploit all of us.
If you thought the Matrix was merely futuristic and philosophical, then think of it a bit more - think of it as a metaphor for the system that we live in now. Think of the Matrix as the capitalistic system, think of the machines as the corporations. Then think of the people as....people. Think of the power they were harvesting as money....think of the "life" the Matrix was providing to the people in their pods as the music/movie being provided to us in return...
We ARE in the Matrix, now, and have been as long as civilzation has been around.
And who would pay for all the marketing of the music? I know this is not a popular thing to bring up on Slashdot, but it takes a lot of money to market music. It's one of the reason bands want to sign a record deal, it's not just for the distribution, it's because the record company will promote the music. That doesn't come cheap in todays market.
When a band gets an album cover on the front page of iTunes, do you think that's because it's good? No, it's because the record company paid for "placement", just like they do with the big posters in the windows of Tower Records. That stuff doesn't happen for free.
We can all wish for some utopia world where the best music sells the most, but it doesn't work that way. If it did, Linux would be #1, not Windows.
Exploitation of people exists in every system. Unfortunately I think it is in the nature of political systems. It certainly exists in Capitalism, but was worse in Feudalism and arguably worse in Soviet Communism.
There will *always* be predatory people. It is *not* a function of the economic system but rather a function of the nature of human politics.
The goal, IMO, is not to eliminate such exploitation but to make sure that a) the public good is defended and b) that there are checks and balances that prevent such exploitation from getting out of hand.
Unfortunately, the RIAA has subverted the public good with very little discussion or debate, and to date, there are precious few checks and balances on that system.
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