Recordable Media a Bigger Threat Than Filesharing?

Matilda the Hun writes "The Register is reporting on the RIAA claims that recordable media is more of a source of piracy than P2P networks. From the article: 'The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorized downloads, Associated Press reports. According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.'"

Comments

RIAA should address the cause

[bigwavejas]

It seems to me like the RIAA is stabbing blindly in the dark. They constantly shift their attention from one medium (for pirating) to another. Instead of focusing on the symptoms they should direct their attention to the cause. I know I'd buy more music (cd, mp3 or ?) if it was reasonably priced. $1 dollar/mp3 and $12.99 or more for a CD?? I'm sure they have some justification for the pricing, but... obviously something's amiss. I'm not advocating pirating music, but I do think until a happy "middle-ground" is found, this problem will not go away.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[garcia]

It seems to me like the RIAA is stabbing blindly in the dark. They constantly shift their attention from one medium (for pirating) to another.

They aren't stabbing in the dark at all. These have been slow and calculated moves! They have been planning on attacking the P2P networks, getting people to switch to legally downloaded media formats (which basically eliminate distribution costs as the RIAA doesn't even pay for it), and now they want to end recordable media!

According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.

So, now that they believe that they have lessened the impact of downloaded music by finally "opening" up to the desire of the market and selling their wares, they have decided to turn their FUD campaign towards recordable media.

Yes, we should all bend over backwards to the wishes, whines, and desires of a small group of "individuals" that are just trying to protect their financial interests, right? Why should we have any fair-use rights? That doesn't help the RIAA's bottom line does it... We need to be re-educated into believing that fair-use doesn't exist. If you want to play your purchased music on your portable player *and* use a CD you have to buy it twice! Once for the MP3 player and once for the CD player.

DO NOT PURCHASE SONGS BACKED BY THE RIAA. It is only increasing their finances which are used to back legislation and smear campaigns to further erode fair-use rights.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[goldspider]

No middle ground will be realized until both sides of this issue grow the hell up.

The RIAA uses unprecidented strongarm tactics to essentially preserve their outdated business model in law. They charge very high prices for CDs, restrict their usage, and then wonder why their customers aren't happy. Grow up.

On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law. I also hear that music sucks these days, and it's not worth buying. Yet the same people fill their hard drives with this "crap". That's hypocritical. Grow up.

So where's the middle ground? One side wants too much money, and the other side doesn't want to pay anything. Good luck with that!

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Overzeetop]

Yes, we should all bend over backwards to the wishes, whines, and desires of a small group...

Actually, I believe the RIAA standard line is that you just bend over.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[shark72]

"I know I'd buy more music (cd, mp3 or ?) if it was reasonably priced. $1 dollar/mp3 and $12.99 or more for a CD?? I'm sure they have some justification for the pricing, but... obviously something's amiss."

Amazingly enough, at $12.99 per CD, record companies typically net significantly less than 20% at the end of the year. If you were to plot the net margins of all the companies from which you buy goods and services, CDs would be on the far left of the graph. Choosing to pay or not pay for CDs is one thing, but it's not accurate to state that CD prices are "unreasonable" if one also happily buys food at the supermarket, clothing at the mall, PCs (including parts and accessories), and countless other items from industries that typically enjoy net margins well in excess on what the record industry relies on.

The "but I only pay $0.25 for CD-Rs, so $13 for a CD is an outrage! Bok bok bok!" kids are missing the deadly difference between gross margin and net margin. The $13 you pay for a CD covers all the operating costs (salary, overhead including shrinkage, advertising) of the retailer, as well as the distributor (5% right there, if disty margins are the same in the record industry as they are in the computer peripheral business), and must cover the cost of shipping, returns (an educated guess is that it's about 10% in the record industry), price protections (probably another 10%), co-op advertising (another 5% - 10%), the salary of everybody at the record company and studio who worked on it in some way, royalties for the composers and songwriters, and of course the COGS, which are about 25% of the sell-in price to disti. This is why even at low-overhead indy record labels, a CD must sell about 10K pieces before it breaks even (that number is said to be 100K for the big RIAA companies).

In short, simple bromides like "CD prices should be more reasonably priced" won't cut it. I've no doubt that you and others would like them to be cheaper (I wish lots of things were cheaper) but a sub-20 point net margin is certainly reasonable in our economy.

As for online music sales... Apple has sold 50 million tracks, and the online music industry is growing logarithmically. It may be hard to convince them that their product is not "reasonably priced." The biggest mistake we can make is thinking the enemy is stupid. You can bet that Apple and the record companies have done the requisite surveys and research on elasticity and demand to know that $1.00 is the right price to charge, and that charging $0.90 or $0.80 will not result in higher net revenues. I know I sure wouldn't buy more if they were a dime cheaper -- I don't lose any sleep over a buck a track. I'll take your word for it that you would, but Apple's research appears to indicate that there more consumers like me than you.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[overshoot]

I'm sure they have some justification for the pricing, but... obviously something's amiss. I'm not advocating pirating music, but I do think until a happy "middle-ground" is found, this problem will not go away.

So quit whining and act like an adult: if you don't like the RIAA's tactics, put your money behind someone who treats you better. I'm currently having a minor love affair with MagnaTune [1] but suit yourself.

Just quit pretending that it's someone else's job and that you can have it all without any inconvenience. [1] They don't do DRM, they sell you 100% recordable disk images, and they pass 50% of sales to the artists. Isn't that what we've been saying we want?
OK, they don't have your favorite payola-pumped band. That sets a pretty good price for your stated principles. Maybe if you took your money elsewhere that would change, eh?

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[amliebsch]

Why should music be any different?

It's not, as you pointed out. You can give your friend your book, and you can give your friend your CD. What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.

Really, it's not that hard to understand.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Raul654]

" The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law."

LARCENY - Illegal taking and carrying away of personal property belonging to another with the purpose of depriving the owner of its possession. The wrongful and fraudulent taking and carrying away by one person of the mere personal goods of another from any place, with a felonious intent to convert them to the taker's use and make them his property without the consent of the owner.-Lectlaw
 
Copying copyright music does not "deprive the owner of its possession", and therefore it is not theft. Do your homoework next time.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[ScentCone]

As much as I like finding the middle ground, it's shit like this - mis understanding the argument - that makes it harder

But the parent is correct, none the less. How often do you reply with a clarifying comment when some does use the "infringment isn't theft" red herring in order to change the topic away from the fact that they're pirating anyway? I'd love to think that you're just as adamant about shouting down pirates as you are about people who argue about the semantics of the word "theft."

From my personal observations here and in other venues, a lot of people too cheap to pay the artists they claim to like what those artists are asking for their work immediately trot this and other falacious defenses, no matter how ridiculous. They won't confront the heart of the matter, which is that they're hypocritical in the extreme. It doesn't matter what they think about where the industry is or should be heading, what matters is that the at least some musicians still prefer a business arrangement whereby they are paid for the music they sell, and if you don't like that, you're welcome to listen to them on the radio or just choose entertainers that aren't looking for income from the sale of their recordings. It doesn't matter whether or not those artists will eventually be shown to be wrong about how not charging for your work will still somehow pay the bills... for now, they've asked that you pay, and they have the law on their side. If you don't like their choice of that arrangement, then you don't like them, and of course wouldn't dirty your ears with their music. Unless of course you're a hypocrite, which surely you're not.

But a whole lot of other people are, and many of them hate to get pinned down on it. They then frequently try to change the subject to imply that, hey, it's only infringement. Besides, they wouldn't have purchased the music anyway, it's all terrible Corporate Sound anyway. Um, other than the fact that they went out looking for it and got hold of it... which means they value it in some way, and thus value the artist who created it and asked that they pay for it. They just don't value the artist enough to show them that little bit of respect, that's all.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Alphabet Pal]

The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law.

So... when is breaking of the law justified? For a significant period of time, the return of runaway slaves to thier "owners" was the law in the United States. Law or no law, a lot of brave people risked incarceration to smuggle these people to freedom, and ultimately the law was changed.

Maybe $12 CD's aren't quite as morally repugnant as slavery, but "the law is the law and you should follow it whatever it says" is ridiculous.

Note to trigger-happy FBI enforcers - I don't pirate music, I just don't pass judgment on those who do.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[nkh]

The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law. I also hear that music sucks these days, and it's not worth buying. Yet the same people fill their hard drives with this "crap". That's hypocritical. Grow up.

How about the taxes I pay on every blank CDR and every GB of my hard disks? With these taxes, I help the funding of associations like the RIAA without listening to their crap.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[pete6677]

Outlawing (or severely restricting) recordable media is likely going to be a lot harder for the RIAA than it was for them to buy laws against online file trading.

It's easy to convince a bunch of middle aged senators that those evil computer hackers are stealing the labels' music because they typically don't have the greatest understanding of computers. But I'd be surprised to find even one US senator who has never copied an album onto a tape or received a copy from a friend. They will see that recording onto CD is the same thing, and will be a lot more reluctant to try to outlaw an activity that they know people have been doing for a long time.

Since the home tape recorder did not kill the music industry and in fact helped it, legislators will have a much harder time buying the argument that recordable CDs will kill the industry.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[jb.hl.com]

Nice of you to say that we shouldn't purchase RIAA backed music...but you see, the problem is that some of us happen to like RIAA backed music. Not artists that sound like RIAA backed music, actual bands like Radiohead, the Kaiser Chiefs, Franz Ferdinand, Pink Floyd, Four Tet etc who we like the music of, who happen to be backed by the RIAA.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

No middle ground will be realized until both sides of this issue grow the hell up.

You could have stopped before the word "until" and been even more correct.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[pla]

No middle ground will be realized until both sides of this issue grow the hell up.

Who wants middle ground?

I buy quite a lot of CDs (20 to 50 per month). The RIAA could consider me one of their best customers (even with over half my purchases going to indie labels), except that I deliberately buy only used discs. Why? The RIAA has basically shot themselves in the foot, in three ways:

Technologically, I loathe DRM; although I have yet to find a disc I can't rip, the mere fact that they would try to prevent me from using music I buy (and spare me the "owned-vs-licenced" semantic BS - to the typical consumer, if I pay cash for a physical product that doesn't have a return date on it, I "own" it) however the hell I want, very much offends me.

Politically, I don't like the bullying tactics of the RIAA, nor do I like their constant attempts to legislate their business model into what amounts to perpetual profit for no further work input. Although I can't hurt them all that much, I certainly won't help pay for their war-on-the-little-guy.

Economically, the most simple, they charge too much for no good reason. Do they have that right? Yes, certainly, they could charge $500 per CD if they so desired. But perception matters quite a lot - Even nonhuman primates will petulantly turn their noses at a known bad deal ("tolerable" vs "preferred" food as reward for doing something, when they've seen someone else get the preferred reward for the same task). Tapes cost around ten times as much to manufacture as CDs, yet cost half as much? Keep your lettuce, and stack your damned colored blocks by yourself!


So, who wants a middle ground? I say, Screw the RIAA. Let 'em go under. The artists will still create, they just won't have so many mob-affiliated middlemen taking a cut of the till. And thanks to the internet, the artists can actually do just that, in a manner far more effective than the old standby of offering tapes/CDs for sale at their concerts.



and the other side doesn't want to pay anything

No, one side wants too much control, and the other side wants the same "fair use" rights they've had all along. I consider the "money" part of this issue the least important.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[happyemoticon]

Certain technologies which the **AA's love attempt to tie your copy of Dirty Harry to your DVD player and your DVD player only. DIVX was the first implementation of this, and it was universally shunned, but don't think for a second that they're not trying to bring it back when the next generation of digital media comes out. I know for a fact that both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD have embraced digital watermarking - how it is implemented remains to be seen.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Thangodin]

Well said. I've stopped buying CD's, because I don't want to give any more money to the bloated corporate entities that overcharge for music while they screw the artists. I buy my music on iTunes now. The next step is to get a direct pipe from artists to net distribution without involving the record companies at all, something that promotes new music through user reviews and ratings, and links tastes through similarity (people with your tastes also liked...) This last part would be a natural for Google.

On the other hand, people who copy music without paying anything for it are censoring themselves. The money that you spend is a vote. You can bitch all you like about Wal Mart, but if you shop there, you're supporting it. You can rave all you like about a band, but if you never buy anything they make, nobody is going to know or care what you think. There were bands in the 90's who had a strong following amongst the computer crowd who couldn't make any money because people just shared it around. If you like it, money talks. Pay for it. Otherwise you can look forward to a world where all you can get is people like Celine Dion and Britanny Spears. In other words, music for people who are too stupid to know how to copy it.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[steve_bryan]

What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.

Really, it's not that hard to understand.

I don't agree that your proposition is so easy to agree with and understand. CD's are inherently fragile so I have learned through repeated experience that using the original disc is foolhardy. It will fail and the only remedy available is to purchase another one.

So if I were to lend a CD to a friend I would certainly only do so with a copy of the original. As long as the replacement cost for failed media remains about $15 - $20 there is no way I would willingly agree to taking that risk.

Of course in real life I have lent out books and CDs never to see them again. That is part of the charm of the whole social process. But if I were to analyze and act rationally I would only lend copies of CD's. I'm less concerned about books because that media is not subject to the same catastrophic failure as aluminized plastic.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Alphabet Pal]

in a gross violation of human rights

So... if it turned out that those CD's were manufactured in a slave labor camp overseas, in gross violation of human rights, then would you consider it ok to conflate the two and pirate them?

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[zombie-m]

I havn't bought a RIAA CD in years. But I havn't pirated anything in years either.

Same here. There seem to be many people who boycott the RIAA and just refuse to give them any money, but turning around and downloading songs off of P2P networks just makes the RIAA right when they talk about downloading leading to decreased sales.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[chefmonkey]

Admittedly the data points are becoming harder to locate, but I'm going to assert "complete and utter bullshit," based on the relative costs of CDs and Cassettes (which are much more expensive to manufacture, by the way).

Here's one datapoint for you; you can find others. (For example, "The Very Best of Kenny Rogers" on Amazon: $5.95 on tape versus $9.95 on CD). Based on what I've seen, margins on CDs must top 50% -- unless record companies take a significant loss on cassettes.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Stauf]

Copyright infringment is not the same crime as piracy or theft. They are different. Consider how you'd feel if you spent most of your life being a singer, and someone referred to you as a dancer.

I am not arguing that piracy is ok. But compared to actually stealing something? It's not the same thing. It's even worse when you call it 'piracy', because piracy is a much worse crime still.

Using the terms 'piracy' and 'theft' make it look as though you don't understand the issue. Their use makes it appear that you don't actually know what you're accusing these people of. Imagine, if you're arrested for breaking the speed limit, hauled into court and the judge starts handing down a sentence for manslaughter. Imagine if you start to say 'but I was only speeding' and he shouts you down with the 'but isn't it the same thing?' argument.

But I agree with the most of your post - it's not a defense to argue that the terms you are using are wrong; all it really just shows is that a) you don't truly understand the issue or b) you're not interested in using the language correctly.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Dun Malg]

I think you completely missed the point of the argument. The point of the poster you quoted is that it is still illegal, and that the semantics of the argument used to justify breaking that law are absurd.

Actually, I think you are missing the point. Calling it "theft" inaccurately frames the infraction as something universally regarded as immoral: the taking of another's property. Copyright infringement falls very much in a gray area. Heck, the very notion of copyright didn't even exist for the majority of recorded history. The fact that copyright infringement is currently a crime doesn't automatically promote it to the same level as theft. The justification for breaking the law is that the law is bad. Legality and morality are not always 1:1.

Besides, you took the definition for larceny, not necessarily theft. Also, there are legal definitions and social definitions, they vary in accuracy and meaning.

Yeah, you can easily muddle the argument with non-legal usages of the word "theft", but they're essentially irrelevant to the question of the legality of copyright infringement, and the morality aspect is purely a matter of opinion. No reasonable person would ever attempt to claim legal or moral equivalence for a vernacular usage (e.g. "That bitch stole my boyfriend" is not rational debate), so claiming the OP could have been referring to common usage when it was a clear reference to debate. Clearly, society does not agree on that copyright infringement is the moral equivalent of theft, otherwise there'd be a whole lot less of it. Social mores are a consensual thing-- they don't exist on their own.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[glassjaw rocks]

Metallica blows dead bears, old stuff or new.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[tolkienfan]

Actually, duplicating some of a CD or cassette tape for a friend or family member has long been accepted as fair-use - ie not requiring authorization from the copyright holder.

So is duplicating some of a book.

The monopoly provided by copyright is there for one reason and one reason only: promoting science and the "useful arts".

The RIAA and MPAA and others (including the software industry) have perverted copyright to promote their own interests.

Unless we fight, we will continue to lose ground.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[SeeTheLight]

or if the player were to mechanically break down and scratch the CD (especially computers reading digitally at 52x)

Add to that list "or if the player were to completely shatter the CD while trying to read it in the drive.". I've seen it happen once.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Foobar of Borg]

This is really more about the difference between law and ethics. Ethically, I would agree with you that the employer is stealing from you. Legally, however, the two are different. If your employer does not pay you, you can sue your (now former) employer for your pay. It is a civil and not a criminal matter. If your employer, however, breaks into your house and robs you of an equal amount of money, it is now a criminal matter and he can spend a considerable time as a guest of the state. I would see copyright in the same light. From a moral standpoint, you could argue that it is stealing, but not from a legal standpoint. (oh, and I am not a lawyer, it's just my 2 cents).

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[bigberk]

Then maybe you should learn to put your values ahead of entertainment. Not to sound harsh, but this isn't going to work unless you stick up for what you believe is right.

In my case, I believe in the public's fair use of media and the right for someone who owns equipment (e.g. computer equipment or audio equipment) to do whatever they want with it. I will not buy crippled computer equipment, and I will not support the companies responsible for WIPO, DMCA (US), C-60 (Canada) etc.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[radish]

I'm less concerned about books because that media is not subject to the same catastrophic failure as aluminized plastic.

CD -> Sharp implement
Book -> Hot implement, wet implement

If I lend a CD to a friend I do so with the implicit, unstated assurance that if they lose or damage it, they will buy me a new one. Exactly the same as if I lend them a book, or my car, all of which are liable to sudden catastrophic destruction in the right situation.

Libraries lend out original copies of books, and CDs, and DVDs, and other media. They don't seem to require special procedures due to the nature of the media.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Scudsucker]

Put it this way. If you work for someone, and they don't pay you, have they stolen from you?

Considering there's no copying involved, I don't see how your analogy is the best put forward. Here's a better one: you ever watch football? When a receiver fails to make a catch for whatever reason, does that mean that the team lost yardage? Of course not, you can't "lose" something you never had in the first place.

So the sum total amount of money "lost to piracy" is zero and will always be zero. That doesn't mean it's not wrong or illegal, the same way arson manages to be wrong and illegal, even though it's not theft.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Dwindlehop]

A more apt example might be Prohibition. An activity which had little moral repugnance to most of the population was illegal for a time, but finally became legal. Certainly people who sold alcohol during Prohibition were breaking the law, and I doubt few would try to argue that "beer wants to be free." In 1933, when Prohibition was lifted, all the people who were breaking the law by going to speakeasies were suddenly on the right side of the law again. Were they justified in breaking the law before 1933? No, but neither were they wrong to want a drink.

Once again, we have an activity, now copyright infringement due to filesharing, which currently is illegal and which millions of Americans do anyway. It's like being in the middle of Prohibition. Is one justified in breaking this law? No, but neither is one wrong to want to fileshare. Perhaps the nation's electorate will once again communicate what it wants to its government, over the objections of a vocal minority.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[ShieldW0lf]

The RIAA and the MPAA collectively make a lot of money, but that's just a drop in the bucket. The amount of money they make amounts to something like 2% of the GDP. Think about that. 2% of all the money out there comes from RIAA/MPAA earnings.

Now add in the theft that comes from p2p file sharing. Even the most conservative estimates place the value of the media being stolen by these pirates at something in the order of 800% of that being sold. That's 16% of our GDP being stolen by these pirates each year.

Now we need to add in all the theft that goes on with copying cds. We've just recently discovered that it's an order of magnitude worse than the p2p file sharing... I'm talking 8000% of the value of that actually sold. That's 160% of our GDP being stolen and never making it into the economy!

Now lets do the math. 2% that's actually being sold, plus the 16% being stolen on p2p networks, plus the 160% being stolen by cd pirates, plus the other 98% (drugs and cars and oil and stuff. That works out to 276%!!!

This means that if we can put a stop to all this piracy, our GDP will damn near triple! That will trickle down and we'll all be rich!

It's all on account of those bastard pirates that we're all always broke! Dob them in!

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[AthenianGadfly]

"... doesn't matter, you still can't legally copy them and distribute them."

Actually, as far as copying goes, you can legally make a backup copy under fair use - for just such an instance (the original media is lost or damaged). While you certainly can't go in for wholesale distribution of copies, if memory serves fair use also covers lending media to a friend.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Ira_Gaines]

If more artists released albums with more than two good songs on it, I would value music more and buy more. Back in the 70s and 80s, artists released albums that were good from start to finish. If the music industry puts out albums with disposable crap on them then people will value it as such.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[shark72]

"but I'm going to assert "complete and utter bullshit,"

Out of line.

"(For example, "The Very Best of Kenny Rogers" on Amazon: $5.95 on tape versus $9.95 on CD). Based on what I've seen, margins on CDs must top 50% -- unless record companies take a significant loss on cassettes."

Yeah, my guess is that the cassette version has been price protected (that is, the record company issued a credit to Amazon to help them sell it down). Not a huge demand for Kenny Rogers cassettes any more. Price protections are likely built into the margin model for record companies; the 20% guesstimate accounts for price protections. The record companies may very well be taking a bath on unsellable cassette inventory, but they make it back on the platinum-selling CDs. The recording industry is a speculative market and the 20% net margin estimate is an end-of-year average, but not typical per-piece net margin, if you know what I mean. You're probably correct that the big-selling CDs might net 50%, but those sales help pay for a lot of failures.

In case you're curious, Amazon makes about 12 - 15 points per sale and disti take about five points, so the net sell-in price (after price protection) was about $4.85. I'd count about $2.00 in royalties for Kenny and crew (he does a lot of covers and doesn't write a lot of his own stuff, so I'm sure there's a lot of mechanicals and compulsories in there) and maybe another buck for shipping and miscellaneous overhead (record company employees do not work for free). So, if the cassette cost them two bucks to make, you're correct that they're taking a loss after the price protection -- hence the sub-20% net margin even while they may make > 50% on some CDs.

FWIW, similar things happen in the computer industry. I manage a line of peripherals that everybody reading this has heard of (and might even own) and my net margins range from 5% to 50%. The average net margin from my brand is somewhere in the middle.

I hope this helps.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[Anonymous Coward]

"Even my 3 year old knows that you only hold a CD by the edge."

If I were you, I'd get one of those DNA test kits. Apparently the kid is better mannered and smarter than his "father".

If you catch my drift.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[shark72]

"I am not arguing that piracy is ok. But compared to actually stealing something? It's not the same thing. It's even worse when you call it 'piracy', because piracy is a much worse crime still."

Copyright infringement and piracy are synonymous. I think you may be confused by the fact that piracy has multiple meanings, as do the word "bark" and "desert". The meaning to which we are referring is (per "dict piracy" in your Firefox address bar):

The unauthorized use or reproduction of copyrighted or patented material: software piracy.

e.g. we're not talking about running a pirate radio station or taking things from boats. I infer from the .cx in your domain that you're not a native English speaker, so the confusion is understandable.

An interesting bit of trivia is that the use of the word "piracy" to describe unauthorized copying goes back some four hundred years; if that's not older than the word "copyright," then it's at least older than copyright law as we know it.

I hope this helps.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[kitzilla]

> DO NOT PURCHASE SONGS BACKED BY THE RIAA

Actually, this is realistic advice.

It requires *we* change, however: seeking out the best Indie music, promoting it, listening to it, supporting the artists, and developing our tastes beyond the ,ainline music industry.

You know, there's a lot of great Indie music out there. I'm going to begin exploring some Indie artists and posting their music -- with permission -- to my weblog next month.

Let's get after it. As the Joker said, "Let's expand our minds."

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[True Grit]

This is probably what the RIAA is looking to do

They aren't going to stop there though. The RIAA and Co. consider the Constitution's Fair Use provisions to be their Public Enemy #1. When you listen to **IA execs talking about "if it breaks, you should buy another one from us" speech, that is in direct contradiction to Fair Use which explicitly allows a copy to avoid breakage.

In fact, part of the DMCA is technically in contradiction with Fair Use, as the DMCA says its illegal to circumvent copy-protection, even if it is to create a legal backup copy as Fair Use allows.

I'm certainly no fan of commercial thieves, and I don't download music illegally, but mark my word folks, the RIAA will not stop with the theives and the P2P's, their idea of a nirvana *requires* the destruction or neutralization of the Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Amendment. Like all obsolete industries in the past, they will desperately try to keep their high-return industry going for as long as they can, and like many of those past obsolete industries, they're going to try to buy a rejuvenated monopoly with the help of the government (read: buying Congressional representatives).

If they get their way, you will have to come to them when the CDs wear out because you won't legally be allowed to make copies, and I got a buck that says as soon as this happens, the quality (read: longevity) of CDs will mysteriously decline throughout the industry.....

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[steve_bryan]

I suppose your experience may be different from mine when it comes to optical storage versus paper. The small possible defects that seem most likely result in a change to a book which just doesn't matter to me while an error in a CD or DVD that impedes playback just about ruins the experience. One of the first DVD's I purchased was The Matrix which I found fairly entertaining. Not long ago I put it in my current DVD player and found that after a certain point it just stopped playing. Nothing visible on the disc and it had always been carefully treated and stored. It just stopped working. I've not had the end of a book disappear on me.

Re:RIAA should address the cause

[aka-ed]

Actually, what I think the RIAA is angling for, without actually saying so, is a piece of the sales on all recordable media as "compensation" for their ridiculously inflated estimation of lost sales.

sneakernet

[BWJones]

When you are talking about significantly large amounts of data (hundreds of GBs to TBs) it is actually faster and cheaper to put it on a hard drive and FedEx or (insert your favorite delivery company here) and ship it. Bandwidth is not free (even for those in Universities where a portion of our indirect costs go to pay for bandwidth) and when you factor in time required to transmit GB to TB of info, it is much more efficient to use "sneakernet" or "shipnet".

This of course is leading many folks who deal with large databases to look at options such as moving the application to the data rather than pull data through the network. What does this mean for the media companies? It may eventually have an effect rendering the methodology much like that of the current TV/radio paradigm in that large repositories of media will be constantly available waiting for an application to travel to the database to query and assemble your media request.

Re:sneakernet

[justforaday]

How do I set up my file handlers to deal with this sneakernet thing?

Hide your mix tapes!!!!

[gbulmash]

This is why every audio tape had a hidden copying tax, a small royalty, legislated into the price, which had to be remitted by the manufacturers of the tapes to ASCAP to be redistributed to artists. I'm not entirely sure, but I think there is a similar sum legislated into the price of video tapes.

ASCAP was lobbying for a similar tax in the '90s on Digital Audio Tape (DAT). Propably the argument against adding it for burnable CD/DVD media is because it's so often used for data... thus the numbers... to justify their position.

The RIAA mindset

[LordKazan]

"Anything we don't have total control over is a threat to our business model" - RIAA

hmmm ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I download the media through filesharing then burn to recordable media. That makes me public enemy #1

Canadian-Style Media Tax

[goldspider]

Is that in America's near future?

In other news...

[harrkev]

In other news, the RIAA has concluded that people are the biggest threat to the recording industry. They are proposing legistlation that will allow all people to be shot.

clunka-clunka-clunka

[yellowbkpk]

...the sounds of the 48" dual lawyer-guns on Battleship RIAA rotating to their new target.

What good are our fair use rights if the RIAA keeps blank media out of our hands?

Imagine a world where you have to go to the "ghetto" to pick up your black-market, vintage 32x Imation CD-Rs...

Bias?

[beanlover]

First sentence in TFA:

The Recording Industry Ass. of America has acknowledged that P2P file-sharing is less of a threat to music sales than bootleg CDs.

Anyone think this is on purpose?

What next...

[Sibb]

So does that mean that since I can't get Chumbawumba's Tub Thumping out of my head because it's so damn annoying, that my mind is subject to a fine by the RIAA? When will the idiocracy stop?!?

Oh sure

[Approaching.sanity]

Blame the media.

In other news...

[johndierks]

RIAA is reported to be lobbying heavily against the speaker industry. "According to our studies, 100% of illegally obtained music is enjoyed through speakers." said RIAA spokesman, Steven Jones. "We implore congress to move quickly to protect artists from the criminals wandering the streets, listening to illegal music through speakers."

RIAA has it all wrong!

[confusion]

100% of piracy is a result of people/companies releaseing copywrited works.

Whether it's recordable media, p2p, thumb drives, magic crystals, or something else, the cat is out of the bag, and there's no going back. Time after time after time efforts to counter the problem are thwarted very quickly. Honest people are going to be honest, (but with the try before you buy advantage) and bad people are going to be bad.

This reminds me of the story of Sisyphus. It's time to stop pushing the rock up the hill and start looking for new business models!

Jerry
http://www.cyvin.org/

Spin Spin Spin

[saur2004]

To push through mandatory DRM crap through congress.

In Other News....

[Krach42]

Today the RIAA reported that the root cause of their piracy problems was their pricing scheme. When asked how to deal with the issue, they said that they were going to make music more affordable, so that it cost less time and money than the time and effort to pirate it.

In other news, 42 inches of snow fell hard in Hell today, to the surprised residences. A sweet scene of tortured souls being allowed a break to run out and have fun due to the little known "Snow Day" clause that let them have the day off. Aww... they're making snow angels... isn't that cute?

Re:In Other News....

[shark72]

"When asked how to deal with the issue, they said that they were going to make music more affordable, so that it cost less time and money than the time and effort to pirate it."

Although you were being sarcastic, that is indeed major part of their strategy (and more here). The record labels can indeed walk and chew gum at the same time, and they've acknowledged using -- in their own words -- a "carrot and stick" approach. This certainly makes sense -- if you owned a retail store and you noticed that you were losing a lot of money to theft, you'd certainly look into lowering your prices to reduce the impulse to shoplift, but you'd install that security system and prosecute shoplifters, too.

FWIW, in 1995, a new CD cost about $18. That would be about $22.50 in today's money -- meaning that CD prices have dropped by almost half in constant dollars.

Bullshit!

[GecKo213]

The more I hear about the RIAA and the MPAA complaining about piracy the more it irritates me. Bullshit!

I'm waiting for the day that they want to start charging us for humming or singing a song that we happen to have heard enough to have it memorized.

Let's abandon them then, and do it Right.

[starseeker]

OK, I have an idea. Let's stop with the stealing of music, and let them do whatever they want to stop us from copying it. There's a simple answer - don't buy it. Instead, create and listen to free content.

Let's get behind iRATE radio, and really get it into shape (http://irate.sf.net./ As a piece of software, from the user end I must confess its user interface leaves a lot to be desired. It's unpolished, unfinished, and has a variety of major missing pieces and flaws. BUT.

I use it quite a lot, because it has something that few other programs have. CONTENT. Legal, free content. Much of it I don't care for (the same could be said of normal radio, for that matter) but the more people involved, the more attention it gets, the better a) the software will get and b) the content will get. As more people prune out the truly bad and things get more interesting, it can (maybe even will) snowball.

I think iRate, or some fork thereof, needs some major improvements, granted. They need to:

a) Update their music selection algorithms, give users a choice of algorithms and a way to indicate genra preferences, and provide a default download pack of the highest rated music to start with (don't start new users with the worst or random, start them with the best! any marketer can tell you you've gotta hook them before you can reel them in.)

b) For goodness sake make the interface modern and more useful as a music player! Model it on iTunes, or whatever other good ones are out there(Rhythmbox isn't too bad) but get off the feature starved java interface.

c) Hook in bittorrent with some kind of legal download only constraints, and give content creators the opportunity to distribute their music using this system if they license it under creative commons terms.

d) Have an elected membership which reviews songs BEFORE they go on the bittorrent network, and have them either give it a yea or nay. Then have two options - the filtered bittorrent, with music that has at least undergone minimal quality control, and the unfiltered madness :-)

Let's show the commercial world that community spirit still exists, and can survive on its own. Open source did it for software, now let's do it for music. Sure it might be harder than for software, but who would have bet on open source 20 years ago? Let's give it an honest to goodness shot, and see if it can be made to work.

Re:Let's abandon them then, and do it Right.

[garcia]

OK, I have an idea. Let's stop with the stealing of music, and let them do whatever they want to stop us from copying it. There's a simple answer - don't buy it. Instead, create and listen to free content.

Thanks, at least someone has been paying attention to what I've been saying all these years! Do not buy music that is backed by the RIAA. Only support the bands that allow the free distribution of their music.

There are already plenty of torrent trackers and listing services out there that do exactly what you propose (and I have listed them before). The "madness" you claim might exist, won't. Artists are still taught to believe what the RIAA is feeding them and it will likely never been overflowing like you hope.

e-tree and dimeadozen along w/various others already take care of the tracking and listing. We just need more bands to allow the trading of their content.

If the RIAA gets their way and either taxes recordable media out of the realm of usefulness or somehow gets it so protected it violates fair-use, then we need to bring back the P2P networks and get people to realize that there are viable performers out there that are releasing their stuff to the public for free!

Re:Let's abandon them then, and do it Right.

[jfengel]

Actually, I think it'll be easier for music than for software.

Open-source software exists against a background of closed-source software. Many people who work on open source have day jobs writing closed-source software, or get to open-source part of their work while closing the parts that are specific to their clients. The most successful bits of open source, Apache and Linux, are heavily subsidized by large corporations that also write closed-source software.

Open source has done well, but it's far from replacing closed-source, and I believe it would slit its own throat if it did.

Music, on the other hand, requires no support network. Go out and download music from iRate or any of the other myriad places you can find free music. Even better, find a band you like and actually buy their CD.

Finding a band you like is a challenge, but it always has been. The RIAA has made it easy on you by buying up all the radio time and making huge marketing efforts. The ideas you mention are good starts, but the best advertising for a band is always word of mouth.

what a joke

[bugi]

The recordable media "problem" was solved years ago by bands such as the Grateful Dead.

That means p2p as a problem is a joke, and old-guard music distributors are so self-absorbed they pay attention to only themselves.

(IOW, just because a narcissist has a bullhorn doesn't mean he's right.)

Is this a joke? Look at the MEASURE!

[PhYrE2k2]

C'mon- is this a joke?

"acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorized download"

Wait? Really? So when people copy 16 tracks on an album compared to downloading 1, the numbers of the former exceed the latter? They say this so they can go after yet another target- writable media. Though how many of those tracks get listened to? When people download their favourite song, they often don't download the whole album (though some do).

So now the RIAA has a new target now that they've lost economies of scale attacking P2P... then they'll go after P2P again. Joy!

This is useless.

-M

Private Copying 2003-2004 Decision

[JonN]

You can read about the Copyright Board's Private Copying 2003-2004 Decision here.

Please not another tax.

[team99parody]

I don't pirate movies (no tv) or music (my purchased cd collection is already too large) - so please don't subject me to a tax to cover your inability to stop a bunch of guys stealing your material.

Personally, I'd like to see the RIAA get their deepest, most desperate desire of locking down all their media and making anyone who wants it pay full price. And I wish them success in offending their best customers by making criminals out of them.

Allowing them to succeed in offending their customer base in this way is the best thing that could happen to independant labels with more reasonable policies and independant artists who go alone with no label. Perhaps then we'll see a FSF/GPL of music able to take roots.

Setting us up for copy protection...

[renard]

Keep your eyes on this one, folks. What the RIAA et al. are telegraphing here is their intent to introduce copy-protected CDs into the US market in a big way over the next year (ie. holidays 2005). In order to bulldoze over consumer's objections, they will need to maintain a constant drumbeat of "piracy, piracy". At the same time they will put the squeeze on retailers to refuse return-requests from buyers who find the latest album won't play in their DVD/Car stereo/Mac computer, and who are pissed.

Long term, they will be looking to get a tax on blank media introduced through their pet Congresspeople, just as in Canada. Don't expect it will let you rip & burn to your heart's content though... it will be framed purely in terms of payback for all that consumer misbehavior.

-renard

Tax would kill Free Music movements.

[team99parody]

so please don't subject me to a tax to cover your inability to stop a bunch of guys stealing your material. ... Perhaps then we'll see a FSF/GPL of music able to take roots.

Oh, and a tax would be the surest thing to kill such a Free-Music movement - because suddenly the Free/Open Music would be forced to subsidize the labels.

This Is Why They Don't Sue Philips

[Master of Transhuman]

Because Phillips makes CD recording equipment for consumers which allow you to pop a CD in your player and record it on another drive in the same device.

And they don't sue Philips for contributing to "piracy" because Philips as a company is bigger than the entire US music industry.

From the Philips Web Site:

Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands is one of the world's biggest electronics companies, as well as the largest in Europe, with 159,709 employees in over 60 countries and sales in 2004 of Eur 30.3 billion.

Whereas GLOBAL music sales were worth $32 billion USD in 2003.

Same reason they don't sue Sony for making the same sort of consumer devices.

Why the massively larger tech industry feels compelled to bow down before these morons is beyond me. Tell them to take a fucking hike.

The Mob certainly is telling them that.

Do it for the kids!

[LWATCDR]

The RIAA got busted for price fixing. They then paid their debt to society buy giving crap CDs to schools and Libraries.

This is the same RIAA that sells our children Devil's music!
Where is the extreme right when you need them??

WTF--I pay them royalties, how is this "piracy?"

[dpbsmith]

Hey, WTF?

Whenever I buy an "Audio CD-R" or "Music CD-R" the price includes a royalty payment. The royalty payment is set at 2% of the manufacturer's revenue (not profit, revenue) and deposited with the U. S. Copyright Office, which in turn pays it into other funds in a complicated way.

According to the RIAA's own frickin' website, two thirds of it goes into a "Sound Recordings Fund" administered by an entity called the AARC which distributes it to artists, and the rest gets distributed to copyright holders.

So how the *&$%&! is this piracy? What's their beef, anyway? They're not getting enough? It should all go to the RIAA instead of some it going to artists? Nothing should ever be copied by anyone, no way, no how?

I mean, just what is their problem?

Dog bites man

[opencity]

Every working musician has known this since Napster. Unless you're so succesful you've become a corporation (Metallica) file sharing is actually good for your business: free publicity. What is devaluing corporate music (besides quality control or lack thereof) is kids burning disks.

If, for some reason, teenagers want the new Korn disk, they pool they're money and buy one, burn two. Can you blaim them when a little pile of digital plastic is $17 at retail?

While it's old news on /. that the new digital free for all is probably good for actual players (and bad for the corporate lawyer types ... choak ... sob ...) what isn't noticed is the audio techs that are now out of work. It's easier to make records with engineers and assistant engineers helping, but, as every professional engineer has found in the last few years, those days are over. There is no corporate money to pay some guy to set up expensive microphones all day on someone elses record. The recording studio industry of the 20th century is going the way of the hat makers.

These days, rather than raising the money and paying to record and mix in a dedicated room with some professionals, I track and mix most everything at home.

Good or bad for the music? You decide (probably both). Like it or not that's how we're going to do it now.

Aside to any audio techs still reading: I recently heard of an auction where a Studer 2" machine went for 8 grand (!?!?). I heard after the auction or I'd have a Studer in my living room.

Obviously only computer people pirate!

[fallacy]

Err, how come RIAA are only (close-mindedly) pointing the figure at recordable CDs as the source of piracy? Are they a memory-selective organisation to not remember those little spinny analogue things which contained an antiquated media called "tape"? Hell, given that one of the RIAA's original tasks/roles was to define standards for not only tape, but (gosh!) CDs (Source: RIAA entry @ WikiPedia) then aren't they indirectly to blame for such a allegedly pirate-friendly media?

They also need to be careful with respect to DRM. As the article states, it's only really the Microsoft platform that supports DRM and thus, ironically, by employing such copy-protection schemes will likely cause some buyers to return their CDs for a refund, and therefore loose the money for the artist, given that a lot of people do not necessarily listen to music straight from the CD. I'm an example of that - my (non-computer) CD player bearly gets a look in these days. I buy a CD not only for the sound quality but to ensure that I pay what I get for (sort of a backwards sentence!) However, I will then rip it to OGG etc for use on my computer and portable music player and the CD then gets stored away.

I download music. I find it a great way to discover different bands etc. If I like the music I buy the CD. Yes, I actually go out and buy that dangerous media of CD. If I don't like the music, it gets deleted there and then.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for payment to the artists etc. I fully support it, which is borne out in my buying of the music if I like it. However, it's the overstated/exaggerated comments by the RIAA that really annoy me and lead me to believe what a generally screwed up world we live in at times. If the RIAA are so concerned about ensuring that artists receive their relevant monies, then do the RIAA soley follow this practice/creed outside of the music industry (only buying FairTradeproducts, for example)?

Theft Arguement

[nurb432]

Sorry, but copyright infringement is NOT theft.

Its infringement of copyrights.. Theft is something different.

Agreed it may be illegal, but at least get it right so your argument might actually have some weight.

Until you do, you are just 'yet another clueless ranter'.

Re:Theft Arguement

[Dunbal]

Sorry, but copyright infringement is NOT theft.

      Of course it's not theft. The penalties for copyright infringement are much steeper!

The start of a new business model

[jfengel]

There are several alternative business models being tried. Apple's iTMS is one, though I have yet to see a major artist try the iTunes-only route. Even those songs have a "CD hole", but the first step to eliminating the CD hole is releasing music only in its DRM'ed form. I betcha that sooner or later Apple will reveal that there are songs you can download that it will refuse to let you burn. That's one new business model.

I didn't say you were going to like it. I just said they were working on it.

There's also a lot of music released without the RIAA, from local and regional bands. You can get that stuff from myspace, from CDs sold on their web sites and at concerts, and even with their blessing from P2P. (I have it straight from a musician friend of mine that you shouldn't have to pay to download one song.)

Of course you've never heard of any of these, because the RIAA's business model depends on you accepting what they advertise to you. If you want to deal a blow to the RIAA's business model, go out to your local club or browse the web for a while. And you can do it legally, too.

A bad business model is its own punishment. Let them flounder. Unless you happen to like what they're feeding you and you just don't feel like paying for it, in which case I call you "hypocrite". Opting out of the RIAA's business model isn't at all hard.

Independent music...

[utopianfiat]

There are a lot of independent bands out there that SUPPORT sharing their shows and albums just so they can get some widespread exposure.
I can say that ever since I was invited to a special private torrent tracker for non-RIAA-only music, I have gone to more concerts, bought more music, and supported more artists through purchase of swag than I ever had before.
I'm not going to link to the tracker here (for slashdot's sake, their bw bills are high enough...)

Re:News Flash: Comptuers Are Used....

[Dunbal]

Next the *AA will claim that most illegal copying is done on *gasp* those 'evil general purpose computers'

      They've already managed that. This is what "Trusted computing" and DRM is all about...

Re:CD-R tax

[calibanDNS]

And what about us poor schmucks who buy blank CDs for purposes other than music piracy? I don't want my CD-R purchases taxed more just because the RIAA is too stubborn to overhaul its business model.

Doctor Evil, That Already Happened.

[argent]

That's what things like Secure Audio Path is all about. Microsoft and Intel and the hardware vendors are working hard to keep our computers from BEING "general purpose computers".

There is only one child in this argument

[Anonymous Coward]

Except, of course, the 12 year old the RIAA sued.

"Piracy" increases sales! Roger McGuinn(sp? The old "Byrds" band from the 60s) said outright that "piracy" via the old, dead Napster revitalized his career. The labels had writen him off.

This is the REAL reason they want to kill P2P, not "piracy." P2P DOES affect the labels bottom line.

Now, this sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. The majors have radio sewn up (see "payola"). The radio plays what the RIAA labels tell it to.

But there's a new kid - P2P. If I download Metallica, I'm likely to buy Matallica. However, if I download someone not on the radio, they don't get that Metallica sale because I already spent the fifteen bucks on two indie CDs.

It's not about lost sales to "thieves," it's about lost sales to the competetion.

P2P is to the RIAA what FOSS is to Microsoft: a possible monopoly breaker. You can see why they hate it.

Re:There is only one child in this argument

[Thuktun]

If that were the case, they'd flood P2P with their own music. They're not.

Why join 'em when you can beat 'em?

Re:There is only one child in this argument

[happyemoticon]

Your logic is flawed. GP says that P2P grants independent artists exposure that they would not otherwise have, which translates to sales. Label artists already have plenty of exposure - in fact, perfect exposure, because they can partically determine who fails and who succeeds depending on who they decide to promote. Those in a strong or monopolistic market position always use different tactics than those in a weak position.

The cost of doing business

[erroneus]

Look. At some point the law, and everyone else needs to say "SUCK IT UP RIAA because that's who you're doing business with!"

It doesn't matter how the RIAA is to be compensated for anything anyone does that infringes on their profit model. Whatever compensation they are given, it will never be enough because they will continually lie about the damage being done until everyone that hums a tune to themselves has to pay for each note in a song!

People will do what they do. They are making more than enough money and if they decide the business isn't profitable then let them LEAVE the business as surely someone else will pick up that ball and run with it under the current conditions.

If the RIAA wants to "tax" our blank media, then they'd damn well give us a carte blanche to make all the "illegal copies" we want without fear of prosecution since we'd be paying for our crimes in advance of our committing them.

That said, the RIAA knows their customers and the people at large. They should just forget about it and leave their profits where they are... they're "good enough" damnit.

Buy a Mac?

[buddachile]

When we reviewed Macrovision's then state-of-the-art CDS-300 version 7 copy-protection scheme last year, while it happily imposed restrictions on Windows users, the sample tracks we were challenged to rip where easily converted from CD audio to MP3 on a PowerBook G4 running iTunes. Right now, the solution to copy-protection appears simple: buy a Mac.

What about a Linux box? Anyone having trouble ripping copy protected CD's on a Linux box?

Will the RIAA ever alienate us completely?

[rolfwind]

I'm sick of the complaining from the RIAA. I've been hearing it since forever - will our generation ever turn our backs to big media completely and force their artists to go into other distribution methods (for their long term good as well) in our lifetime?

I know it's an idealistic thought - but now the technology is available and the internet makes it technically plausible - I would think it'd be only sweet poetic justice that it'll do them and the companies behind them in.

It sickens me when I think that they'll still control music in 20,30,40, or 50 years with their righteous airs and the arrogant expectations that they should sell more every year no matter what garbage they push.

Middle ground

[Andy Gardner]

So where's the middle ground? One side wants too much money, and the other side doesn't want to pay anything.

Lower prices?

Then I have some REALLY bad news for these guys

[twigles]

I stopped using CDs years ago. I now have a 200 gig external hard drive, and when that gets too small I'll buy a 500 gig one. If I want to pirate something I'm going to damn well do it, and I'll do it 30 gigs at a time while I go eat a burrito with my friend.

These clowns need to start charging much lower prices like the guys over at allofmp3.com. They don't have to match those prices, but $1/song is stupid.

I WANT TO PAY FOR MUSIC! And I'd rather have it be completely legit than have to go to some quasi-legal Russian site. But they can shove their high prices where the sun don't shine.

Can't do it

[DynaSoar]

"The RIAA's favoured solution appears to be copy-protected CDs"

But playing those are illegal according to the DMCA. Playing them converts the signals into audio line level, which does not contain the copy protection scheme information. Any device which removes the copy protection feature is a violation of the DMCA. Every CD player does this as a matter of course. No CD player transmits the protection scheme along with the audio signal.

It's right there in the law. Putting a copy protected CD to its intended use is against the law.

The RIAA is suggesting people break the law.

"The latest 50 Cent album for $3 to $5"?

[DrCode]

Sounds like a great business!

Re:CD-R tax

[shark72]

"And what about us poor schmucks who buy blank CDs for purposes other than music piracy?"

It's easy, at least in the US -- avoid the CD-Rs labelled "music" or "audio" and you'll do fine. The only difference is a bit of encoding near the spindle that lets set-top CD burners recognize them. There is no levy in the US on general-purpose data CD-Rs (although I can't say the same for our friends in Canada).

"I don't want my CD-R purchases taxed more just because the RIAA is too stubborn to overhaul its business model."

We'll put it aside for a second that the large majority of the levy on audio CD-Rs goes to artists and musicians (an important point to understand for anybody who kneels at the altar of "artists good, record companies bad"). But can you elaborate on the business model to which you're referring? If you're referring to the "charge money for goods and services" model, it's undergone significant changes in the past ten years. CD prices have dropped almost 50%, and they've finally embraced online distribution, which is growing at a logarithmic rate. They're using the "carrot and stick" approach: sure, they're lowering prices and taking advantage of the demand for downloadable music, but they'll also sue people if they think it will ultimately help their bottom line. Likewise, if they get a small percentage of the levy charged on digital recording devices and media, it's all good. Just as in your household budget, more money is always better.

This is an approach taken by many businesses. For instance, if you ran a retail store, you'd consider running sales and selling high quality merchandise and doing advertising -- you're not relegated to picking just one strategy, and neither are record companies.

Re:CD-R tax

[Gobelet]

Well that's why we always say here in France, but they just tell us to fuck off. We have CD-Rs for almost 2$ a piece FFS!

Finally!

[lasindi]

You are one of the few people on Slashdot who are thinking reasonably about this issue.

They [the RIAA] charge very high prices for CDs, restrict their usage, and then wonder why their customers aren't happy. Grow up.

Yes, but there is a perfectly ethical and legal way to fight this: simply don't buy the music. If Ford charged ridiculously high prices for their cars, don't buy them. But that doesn't mean that you now have a right to go steal these cars (yes, I know it's not perfectly analagous, which is a good segway to my next point ...).

On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law.

"Theft" is a slightly inaccurate portrayal of copyright infringement. It is much more like counterfeiting, which I hope we all agree is and should be illegal. In a capitalist economy, you earn money for your work, and you can then convert money into stuff you want (like music) as a reward. No, it doesn't directly affect anyone negatively, but that is an extremely short-sighted view of it. If counterfeiting were legal and everyone did it, money would become worthless and the economy would become irrelevant.

Similarly, piracy music devalues music and means that there is less of a reward for those who do work. If you pirate music, then you are getting a reward without earning it.

In any case, discussion of the practical effects of the RIAA's licensing schemes are beside the deeper point. If you are one of the "information wants to be free" crowd that doesn't recognize intellectual property, then you have a much more fundamental disagreement with the RIAA. But if you do recognize intellectual property as a legitimate idea, then you have to accept the RIAA's licensing terms for what they are, whether you like them or not. These terms are and should be set by copyright holders (who are in this case the RIAA). If they are acceptable, buy the music. If they aren't, don't buy it. If you believe in copyright, but also believe that customers should be able to write arbitrary licenses for IP they don't own, you hold completely contradictory views.

Digital Millennium fair use rights

[Arru]

Luckily, such between-friends copying tends to be well under the radar of most copyright holders, so it's one of those tree-falls-in-the-forest things. It's when one puts a track in one's P2P share directory for thousands of "friends" on the Internet that copyright holders tend to take notice.

in the 80s and early 90s it was under the radar. Nowadays the RIAA are using the fight against filesharing and whatnot to push technology into a situation where you won't be able to copy between friends, not because of legislation but due to DRM.

Because they're evil? In a way. Because they can make more money that way? Absolutely. DRM of today tend to guarantee (within the limits of the technology) that the media isn't unauthorisedly copied, which means not copied at all most of the time. This leaves the rightsholders (the only people alllowed to copy) in charge of backups, but are they taking up on this responsibility? No.

Case in point: Apple's DRM model basically means you rent the music for a one time charge. They could just register who's bought what and let s/he dowload this again if the file is damaged or lost. But they don't. And Apple isn't even the baddest of the bunch in terms of fair use.Razor-sharp DRM requires a new similarily well-defined fair use right. We don't have that yet and won't get it short of a lot of ranting on the right people.

RIAA are gatekeepers.

[aphor]

If anyone who can afford an iPod can afford to carry a digital recording studio in their pocket, then the barrier to record live music will be low enough for quality recordings of good live music to flood the market. A musician or band can then build up a following and promote themselves with cheap (free) downloads. By the time musicians need major distribution, they will not have to sign crappy boy-band contracts because the P&D will not be able to claim there is a risk that the band will bomb.