File-Sharing Winners and Losers of 2005

An anonymous reader writes "A lot happened in the P2P world in 2005 according to Slyck news. From the article: 'BitTorrent soared to new heights while Steve Jobs enjoyed record breaking iPod sales. Yet not everyone shared this success. The RIAA continued its fight against P2P networking with little effect, as Sony-BMG disgraced itself and the DRM concept.'"

Comments

The RIAA is listed as 1 of the losers....

[rolfwind]

But is it really?

P2P is only increasing the popularity of their wares. Much in the manner that pirated MS Windows in China only increases the popularity of Windows in China until comes such a time that Microsoft can demand payment (and crackdowns from the Governement). It might be years away, but at least they aren't using/learning to use/programming for that Linux thing.

Either way, the RIAA doesn't lose. It only loses if artists start seeing the RIAA as not the only way to distribute their stuff and earn a living (I gotta get signed man!)

But what is being done in this area? Free P2P downloads are certainly not going to entice artists. MP3.com used to be the avenue that I thought could open the way until some major label bought it and killed it.

Has this vacuum been filled?

Re:The RIAA is listed as 1 of the losers....

[darkain]

Piracey is good? - its a great read, describing what happened to the SciFi channel because of torrent downloads.

Re:Quick Summary

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's correct this once again shall we:

Winners: People who don't want to pay for music or movies and would rather steal them.
Losers: Businesses who have a right to sell their products under the protection of copyright laws.
Biggest Losers: The average consumer who has to deal with excessive DRM because of the losers above.

It is not the fault of the "winners" that certain businesses refuse to sell their product without draconian restrictions and inflated prices.

One more try...

[commodoresloat]

Winners: Musicians who now have the opportunity to tap into niche markets globally without paying a blood tax to soulless corporations who are destroying music
Losers: Ego-driven and greedy but untalented millionaire executives at said corporations who will see slightly less profit this year from sucking the blood of people with actual talent by locking down their distribution channels, yet will nonetheless whine like babies that they're being ripped off by the very fans who made them millionaires in the first place
Biggest Losers: Slashdotters who aren't getting a penny of this money but still feel driven to defend these bloodsucking corporate drones every chance they get.

I see 2006 being much of the same as 2005

[Kierthos]

The RIAA and MPAA will still continue to lack a clue as how to effectively deal with P2P (this assumes that there is a way to do so, which, you know, there might not be). The lawsuits filed against Sony might be resolved in 2006, but depending on how many states follow Texas' lead, it could be years...

And if it's anything like 2005, someone will develop and release the newest and greatest P2P application which will be the 'best thing evar!!!1' until the RIAA and MPAA pollute it six months after release. Lawsuits against the creators of P2P apps will continue. And by mid-March, the RIAA will shoot itself in the foot again by filing a lawsuit against someone else's grandma, 12-year old child, or, just for a change of pace, a handicapped person. They will continue to garner more ill will then the MPAA, simply because of their continued stupidity.

Happy New Year.

Kierthos

RIAA

[james.v.farr]

I don't know why I am so passionate about the issue. Sharing music is no more stealing than going to a friends house to watch a movie. If I like the movie, I will buy it, if I like the music I will buy an album. I would really like to say, "Sharing music is not a crime, stealing a CD from a retail outfit is!" There is not much more that can be said about the issue, if anyone likes a song they heard, they will go out and support the artist if they wish to continue the deliverence of good quality music!

Re:RIAA

[mangu]

I would really like to say, "Sharing music is not a crime, stealing a CD from a retail outfit is!" There is not much more that can be said about the issue

Your post is one of the best on this subject that I have seen on Slashdot. That's exactly it.

The media industry has been giving away their music for free for nearly a century, through broadcasts. It has always been understood by the general public that one gets the music for free in the radio, and must pay only for the physical medium where music is recorded. Yes, I know, broadcasting is paid by advertising (or taxes), yadda, yadda, but the general idea is that no one pays to listen to the radio in the way that one pays to buy a CD.

The media industry wants us to believe that the opposite of "copying" is "buying". The opposite of copying is not copying, the opposite of buying is not buying. If someone refrains from copying a music the artist still starves to death, if his CDs are priced too high for the market. That's the true problem that the ??AA keeps denying: pricing. How is it possible for anyone working at home to produce CD and DVD copies that compete on price with mass-produced items?

I have some hobby machines for metal working at home. I could make nails, nuts, and bolts that are identical to the stuff you buy in a hardware store. But I could never make anything at a price that competes with the mass-produced hardware you get at the stores. That's why I don't see any complaints from the Precision Machined Products Association about people doing illegal copies of their products at home.

I could program a hobbyist lathe and milling machine to make a copy of anything the PMPA members sell, but mass production depends on specialized machines that no one has at home. It's the same for CDs and DVDs. The ??AA members make their products in specialized machines, optimized for making and packing millions of copies of each item. No one working at home with his LG-4163 CD/DVD recorder and printing the labels on his HP-890 printer would be able to compete with anything the ??AA members sell, if the prices were right.

Re:I consider myself lucky.

[werewolf1031]

If you're only using P2P to "steal" music, or for w4r3z, I say fuck off: you're tainting a legitimate utility. If you're dumb enough to want to listen to the shit they call music or movies nowadays, you're dumb enough to go out and pay for it. Get off the Internet and stop wasting our bandwidth, you parasitic roaches.

Personal taste not withstanding (and judging from your comments, you seem quite intolerant of any personal preference that disagrees with your own), I guess it would surpise the hell out of you to learn that I've actually purchased DVDs of movies I'd previously downloaded, simply because I liked them... "Spiderman", "Underworld", etc. I also know quite a few others who've done the same, both personally (IRL, ie. siblings, personal friends) and online.

So much for the notion that every download is money "stolen" from the *AA. While I do agree that those who only download copyrighted material are contributing to the problem, berating those people only ignores the underlying problem of an utterly broken copyright system.

...and not even a single new artist has interested me in some years.

Sounds like you've decided to take the stale old "nothing new can possibly be good, only the old stuff is worth anything" approach that is so typical of those who are resistant to pretty much all change. I'm not much younger than you (just hit 34 in October). Almost 40? Big Frickin' Deal, that's not so old. Yeah, I too still love some older music and movies (classic rock, for ex.), but that doesn't automatically mean "new = crap". Yes, there is some new stuff that I would describe as crap, but there's also some great new music -- just bought Corrosion of Conformity's latest, and I dare say the forefathers of metal (Zep, Sabbath) would be proud. And movies: You're old enough to recall the classic Spiderman comics, and can probably attest to how faithful the movie was to the original story... unless, of course, comics are too "low-brow" for you. Seems to me you've let yourself become a stereotypical Grumpy Old Bastard long before your time.

PS: Roaches are not parasites, they are scavengers.