CMU Professor's Rebuttal Against RIAA Propaganda

jsc writes "On Sunday, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette published an article by Cary Sherman, president of the RIAA, stating that university students are hijacking Internet2 to pirate copyrighted works, and schools who don't actively combat file-sharing are teaching their students bad values like "acceptance of theft". The Post-Gazette didn't let Sherman get away with it, though... Today they published a letter to the paper from Roger Dannenberg, a professor of Computer Science and Music at Carnegie Mellon University, reminding everyone how past/present behavior of the RIAA and its members is an even worse model of values..."

Comments

Robin Hood

[fembots]

Is he saying stealing from thieves (or unethical businesses) is not so bad?

Re:Robin Hood

[Anonymous Coward]

No, he's saying people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

Re:Robin Hood

[Tim5309]

I agree that this does seem like the standard "to steal from a thief is no crime" fallacy"

If you'll stop your members from stealing from my friends, and then study some history, maybe I can help you.

The professor's arguments are valid in that the recording industry has commited sins of its own against creativity, but to say that stealing music over I2 is therefore ok simply does not follow.

Re:Robin Hood

[Catamaran]

I agree that this does seem like the standard "to steal from a thief is no crime" fallacy"

You can call it a fallacy, and from a legal pov you are right, but I think the vast majority would consider it a lesser crime than stealing from a non-thief.

Re:Robin Hood

[MrBigInThePants]

What you say is true, however the RIAA are pretending to take the moral high ground here. Most of their arguments center on protecting artist's rights and being able to foster creativity.

While the theft is certainly illegal, and nobody I have read about says it is, the RIAA's position is exceptionally disingenuous for the reasons mentioned.
They argue that law and government should protect them with MORE (very important point) legislation and they have got much of it already. (DMCA) They argue that they should be able to breech people's privacy, destroy whole internet technologies and dictate to the electronics industry what they can and cannot produce.

They argue this because they pretend to defend the artist rights and musical freedom as they have always done. This is obviously wrong.

The question is not nearly as simple as you have made it out to be. It is not a question of "enforcement of current law", but far more insidious.

Having said all that, a great comment on mp3 theft:
"Stealing music is like taking candy from a...large, fat rich person."

Re:Robin Hood

[DecayCell]

No, he's merely saying that until the RIAA starts sticking to its standards, they're not going to get any help from him on his campus.
Fair enough, I believe.

Re:Robin Hood

[Anonymous Coward]

He is saying:

1) Traditionally, RIAA has stifled innovation by using dubious means, and they have always been scared of new technology, and have tried to prevent onset of technology using monopolistic and legal measures
2) RIAA isn't the right guardian for the right of musicians. One ought to see it more as a consortium of big-label music companies, and nothing more.

Re:Robin Hood

[kizzbizz]

Is he saying stealing from thieves (or unethical businesses) is not so bad?

Not quite. He is merely saying that if the RIAA want's to enlist the aid of colleges to combat piracy (Which is CLEARLY the intent of the RIAA's original letter), they need to clean up their act first.

Speficially, the Professors closing coment may sound like he is trying to argue that stealing from the "bad guy" is acceptable, this is a false assumption. He is merely stating that if they want HIS help, they should start holding up their end of the bargin when it comes to the recording artists, nothing more.

Re:Robin Hood

[BCW2]

Just remind the Congresscritters that the RIAA has said some of the exact same things before. I have heard some quotes by the RIAA taken word for word from their testimony before Congress on another technology that was going to starve all artists and kill the industry. They were talking about cassette tape recorders in the early seventies!

Really hurt them, huh!

Same crap, different century.

Re: Robin Hood

[Alwin Henseler]

I don't think the end of the road is certain, but I'll bet it means curtailed development of entertainment in digital form.

Sure, the end of the road is pretty certain, and goes something like this:

• If content is digital, it can be copied easily.
• If it can be copied, it will be copied.
• If people want a copy, they can get a copy (and not pay, if they don't feel like it).
• The content producer can make money by selling physical media (with the content), licensing, online sales, whatever. If it's made cheaper, more media/licenses will be bought, but less profit per sale. If more expensive, more profit per sale, but smaller numbers sold. Optimum somewhere in between.
• DRM (+ lawyers) ultimately change nothing of the above, only serve to push the numbers a bit in one direction or another. Oh yeah, and
• DRM and lawyers add an additional cost for everybody.

So musicians will continue to make music, people will keep listening to whatever they like (and spend money on that, when they feel like it), some industry folks will keep trying to squeeze money from all this, DRM will continue to be broken, and some lawyers will receive fat paychecks. The most succesful businesses will be those that adapt to new circumstances.

And "stealing" only applies to physical items, not when dealing with all-digital content. Use "copyright infringment", "illegal copying" or "unauthorized distribution" instead. You don't 'own' an image, you may own some rights to decide who is allowed to copy that image, and under what conditions. These rights may vary from country to country, and aren't absolute either (see: fair use).

Oh and BTW: "illegal" is not the same as "wrong".

Re:Robin Hood

[TheGratefulNet]

parent: good summary, short and sweet.

two things: moral high ground (riaa/mpaa are good guys; your college students are being bad, please stop them) and also the fact that colleged (and the legal system) should NOT be used to help protect one business' outdated sales model.

confusing morality with their profit stream IS the problem. please help to separate the two.

its fine to complain that your business is losing money. the buggywhip companies went thru that - and so will you, riaa/mpaa. could I suggest getting a NEW business model? laying off some of your staff? changing your price and distribution models?

its quite another thing to act all high and holy try to convince us that you are standing for Truth and The American Way. you're not. you're simply a business like all the rest - a business that is in dire need of a major revision.

if you want to complain about lost profits, STOP BRIBING CONGRESS AND LAWMAKERS! there, that'll save you more money than yelling at pimple-faced teenagers.

Re: Robin Hood

[NixLuver]

Hear, Hear!

The current music industry is a buggywhip plant asking the federal courts to pass laws making it illegal for Ford to sell Mustangs without buggywhips.

The traditional cost of media is largely distribution costs (if you believe the RIAA). The cost of distribution in electronic format is largely and essentially nil (I know the cost of bandwidth; but I could distribute 4000 copies of a 3 MB song per month for $16.95, or 4 tenths of a cent per copy). The largest costs associated with doing business in the digital format is covering all of the agreements with the traditional distribution services so that they can keep making and selling buggywhips regardless of their objective usefulness and value. As you say, the company that will out is the one that adjusts to the market and provides 1) a simple, pain-free process of acquisition, and 2) a cost that is low enough that copyright infringement is more trouble than it's worth. Who is going to go through the trouble of ripping and distributing songs that can be downloaded for, say, 25 cents?

Re: Robin Hood

[laughingcoyote]

So you state, that during the period during which slavery was legal, and freeing a slave without his/her owner's permission was considered theft, it was wrong for the Underground Railroad to operate, in addition to illegal? That since it was illegal for Rosa Parks to sit in the front of the bus, it was wrong? That since it was illegal for the 13 colonies to rebel against English authority, that it was wrong? That since dissent in totalitarian countries is illegal, it is wrong?

Given that, how is any system but totalitarianism a workable one, if we take the premise that the law is always right?

Re: Robin Hood

[hesiod]

> You have effectively stolen X dollars from the seller.

How many times does it need to be said? THEY NEVER HAD THAT X DOLLARS! If they never had it, it couldn't be taken from them, therefore it is not stealing. It is preventing profit, which is very different. Protestors in front of a store can convince people to not shop there. Did they then "steal" from the store by preventing the profit?

No matter how many times you put "in fact" in front of an incorrect statement, it is still incorrect.

> It is theft, maybe not of the actual media, but of the profit the seller SHOULD have been allowed to make on the item.

No one prevented them from being allowed to make money. They did not offer it at an attractive-enough price, so the person chose not to give their money to a corrupt organization (whether they knew it was corrupt or not).

> you do not have the right to steal their money.

But they have the right to steal mine through illegally-obtained and relatively arbitrary taxes?

Fuck that. Once they start playing fair, I will start playing "fair." You can complain about it being illegal, which I will not argue, but you aren't convincing anyone with those tired, rehashed, B.S. arguments. It is IP infringement, stealing is, by definition, about actual property, it does not include infringing on a company's distribution rights to an abstract concept.

Would you argue that it would be stealing if I recorded a song that sounded almost exactly like a popular one (AKA a remake) and then gave it away, because anyone who liked my remake would have liked the original. Thus, I have deprived the original distributor of the money they could have made by people buying copies of the original. Am I a filthy thief?

YAIA

[pdbogen]

(Yet Another Internet Argument)
While I am quite pleased to see authority figures (even if they are just university professors) standing up to the RIAA, I must admit that Prof. Dannenberg actually did rather little to counter Sherman's arguments; while his points are good and valid, they do, unfortunately, follow one of the cardinal rules of internet arguing: Never argue the opponents points, only point out his weaknesses.

Re:YAIA

[Aaron England]

Never argue the opponents points, only point out his weaknesses.

You mean, kind of like what you just did with Prof. Dannenberg's argument?

Wow!

[ta bu shi da yu]

Mr. Sherman, you say that stealing "is not OK," and yet I have musician friends who cannot get RIAA members to pay them the royalties they are due. While you are asking universities to address your problems, please don't forget that you too can be a "powerful leader in curbing theft of copyright materials on campus." If you'll stop your members from stealing from my friends, and then study some history, maybe I can help you.

I'd love to find out who RIAA members are stealing from. That would really stop them from spouting off that the RIAA "protects" artists by allowing them to make a living!

Teaching their students bad values

[kfg]

I'm curious, is the RIAA aware that the universities are engaged in adult education?

KFG

I agree with the professor

[Bananatree3]

It makes sense, at least to me, that the RIAA's all-stakes vendetta against file sharers is taking things too far. While I do think that artists should have the ability to make a living off of their music, it does not at all justify the sheer amount of all out attack that the RIAA has been taking agaisnt File-sharers.

The RIAA's tactis have not done nearly as much I think to stop illegal file-sharing as LEGAL music downloads like Apple's iTunes and others have been doing. The scare tactics employeed by the RIAA only scares off some of the less-diehard file swappers, and does not deter the majority of the sharers out there. While it may seem like the number of file sharers has decreased, the majority of those that have stopped have probably moved to legal forms of getting music downloads. If the RIAA, instead of spending millions on lawyers fees to sue, spend that money on promoting legal music downloading, I have a feeling the impact would be greater

Re:I agree with the professor

[Soko]

I've always believed that the RIAA is more interested in control than sales.

The Internet is a distribution channel that they will never (hopefully) fully control. If they can't control their means of distribution, they can't provide stable financial data - which tends to conflict with what share holders want in a company.

Internet distribution can make the RIAA totally irrelevant. With the right hardware and new applications, almost anyone can make, record and distribute quality music. The RIAA is fighting for it's very existance, IMHO.

Soko

Re:Uphill Battle

[largenumber]

11. In a digital medium, music is just one big number, extremely easy to reproduce, exactly as it is, because it is a number. Before digital mediums this was not possible.

12. You cannot own a fact, not in the intellectual property sense or the physical sense of the word. You cannot own a number because it is a fact.

The intellectual property proponents are in what I like to call a fortified losing position. At one point they had a business model that was based on distribution and storage and now that model no longer works because distribution and storage have become far too easy and cheap. The whole IP discussion is ancillary to their current and future financial crisis. If they don't change their business model or manage to invade every aspect of your personal life in the name of IP (which has less to do with IP and more to do with monitoring and controlling you in ways most find offensive at best), then they will not maintain their entertainment cartel.

Re:The point is?

[Quixote]

True. But his argument is more along the lines of "Physician, heal thyself".

If you walk into a police station with outstanding warrants against you, complaining of a mugging, the cops are going to catch you first before they go after the mugger.

How many times have we read about pot growers who call in cops to complain of a burglary? And guess what? The cops catch them first.

If the RIAA is complaining of a crime, they must make sure that they themselves are innocent of such.

Re:Lacking Content

[Dun Malg]

I hate the MPAA/RIAA as much as anyone, but I wish this letter had had more meat in it. ...The first part is ok, I just wish there were more of it. It's not like the recording industry's history doesn't have enough hypocricy to fill several articles.

You have unrealistic expectations from that type of forum. The problem is, he wasn't writing an article, it was a letter to the editor. Letters that are article length either don't get published or get edited down to two or three short paragraphs. He did the best one could expect within those limitations.

My coworker's kids do this....

[HockeyPuck]

So my coworker tells me of his kid at college, that the university has a internet2 connection. He tells stories of pulling down whole movies in 10minutes.

My BS to this is... these are public universities funded with my TAX DOLLARS. While I was in school, you could get suspended and possibly expelled for abusing the computing systems (downloading pr0n, running a MUDD).

I'm sorry but how does downloading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy on DVD constitute the correct use of a universities network let alone internet2?

So if you look at what the internet2 is supposed to be http://www.internet2.edu/about/ you'll see such reasons for the internet2 as:
* Create a leading edge network capability for the national research community
* Enable revolutionary Internet applications
* Ensure the rapid transfer of new network services and applications to the broader Internet community.

Where does "Trade Maroon5 CDs" fit under this? Sounds like they (the universities and the leadership of the internet2 group) should be cracking down on these guys.

-

Cary Sherman issues the industry's death cry...

[ph4s3]

... And through consistent education programs, they can continually remind users of the value of copyrighted works...

Is it just me, or is the death cry of a middleman always a "reminder" of how important they are to the process of uniting sellers (creators) and buyers (us)? It strikes me as interesting that one must be reminded of the value of something through "education programs," when, if those products had actual value, the buyer would know it inherently.

You know what pisses me off? That I *do* find value in music and enjoy it very much and yet I can't get a non-protected err, non-"enhanced", CD from a particular artist that will play in my damned car's CD player ('99 honda accord, stock system so it is definitely not unique). Here I am, willing to part with $15 for a physical disc with liner notes, cover art, lyrics, and some minor biographical info and I'm not able to find one that I can actually use in the one place I want to use it. I don't have anything against iTunes, but if I buy an album, I want the physical object for my library. It seems like the musicians' fans ARE the market and the RIAA has missed the boat by focusing on illegal activity instead of what the market actually is. Which goes to my point. What happens when an entire industry has lost sight of the market? They try to remind the public of their supposed value and then someone or something arises to serve the real needs of the new market to the detriment of the previous (most likely) monopoly.

R.I.P. Recording Industry Ass. of America

Re:Robin Hood-Ends of the Mark.

[senatorpjt]

Do we gain a better system by assuming the laws are always wrong?

No, but we most certainly DO gain a better system by assuming the laws are not always right.