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New RIAA File-swapping Suits Target Students
Fletcher writes "The Recording Industry Association of America filed another round of lawsuits against alleged file-swappers, including students on 13 university campuses.
The 750 suits come just a few days after Internet researchers released a study that found peer-to-peer traffic had remained constant or risen up to the early days of 2004, despite the pressure of recording industry lawsuits."
For one, you can't stop it by going after people that don't have enough money to pay for cds. CDs printing costs are in like the cents (30-70 cents) to make the CD ready for packaging.
They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold. If they ultimately actually lowered the price to a more convient number maybe people will by them.
Or even maybe have them actually good music to purchase. Going after college students who have enough to worry about is a horrible way to get support. Its a negative campaign that'll end up hurting them.
We need to start using only P2P software that allows connecting through anonymous proxies. Those proxies should of course be located in countries that are known to be unwilling to collaborate with US/European authorities. It would make P2P much slower but should put these lawsuits to an end.
Those Colleges and Universities that haven't agreed to pay tribute to the RIAA by forcing all students to participate in things like the new Napster (participate = include the fee in the student's tuition) will be "strongly urged" to do so at the point of the RIAA's legal gun.
Oh, well, at least it's a good education in the way the outside world "works".
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right." --Senator Carl Schurz (1872)
Good model to get more people buying music. Pissed me off so much I haven't bought a cd in years.
And I will not till they stop this BS. Remember all these losers back in the 60's and 70's I'm sure they copied there buddies music if they liked it.
It's the same shit.
The way to stop this crap is boycott music period. Listen to the radio if you must. A one year boycott and they will crumble like a cracker in a vise.
What's the difference if you get it off the net or get it off FM? I'm sure if they like the music they'll go and buy it to support the band so they can make more for them to enjoy.
Is there a current, up-to-date list of the sued IP addresses? The EFF's doesn't seem to have been updated anytime recently.
Get your copy here. It's an onion-routing network, and open mix-net if you like. It protects your anonimity by using a number of proxies to channel the data, and encrypting the data such that one always knows only the next hop to send it to.
In contrast to, e.g., Ants or MUTE, finding your data scales as log(N) (N: number of nodes in the net), whereas Ants and MUTE scale as N^2. And in contrast to Freenet and friends, this actually works.
Now, you can already just put all your music files in the eepsite/docroot folder of your install, and post your key on forum.i2p. That's enough for anonymous sharing.
Even better: A BitTorrent system that works completely within I2P is in the works ;)
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They charged 15 dollars for most. Only give the artist maybe 70cents-1 dollar for each record sold.
I don't mind repeating this like a broken record. Eventually everybody will get it. Musicians usually get paid NOTHING for CD sales. Yes, by contract they get a small percentage, but that same contract also lets the record company first deduct all expenses of manufacturing, advertising, distribution, etc, etc, which usually leaves a ZERO net payment. For a more detailed explanation of how this works, read this article by Janis Ian, who has recorded more than 25 albums over nearly 40 years, and has yet to see a record company check with a plus sign on it.
The short version is: Musicians make money primarily from live performances, same as they did for centuries before recording technology was invented. What CD sales do for them is give them exposure, which generates audiences for concerts. They get the same exposure whether you buy a CD, download it, listen to it on the radio or find it lying on the sidewalk. Paying for the CD does not help the musician.
Record companies, on the other hand, make nearly ALL their money from CD sales. They justify all their business practices because they lose money on the songs that don't sell well enough to cover expenses. Essentially record companies are venture capitalists who seize all profits from a company until the startup expenses are covered, and then continue to get most of the profits after that.
Would you finance your startup like that? I didn't think so.