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Canadian Music Stars Fight Against DRM
An anonymous reader writes "Some of Canada's best known musicians, including Avril Lavigne, Sarah
McLachlin, Sum 41, and Barenaked Ladies, have formed a new copyright coalition.
The artists say in a press
release that they oppose file sharing lawsuits, the use of DRM, and
DMCA-style legislation and that they want record labels to stop
claiming that they represent their views."
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I am from Quebec and finally proud to be Canadian ! Way to go guys !
If Sarah McLachlan opposes DRM so much why did she have it on one of her CDs? As a matter of fact the CD I'm talking about was one of the Sony rootkit CDs.
Why don't American artist replicate this type of coalition? We let Canada beat us!! Canada!
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
However my guess would be that it is something along the lines of
- Her label did it, not her
- She is opposed to her label having done it, and
- This is why she is starting a public pressure group specifically designed to get her label to stop doing such things.
Perhaps you will suggest that Sarah McLachlan should have used her leverage as an artist with the label to prevent them from engaging in such practices with her music at the time the CD was released. If you do this, I will laugh until I pass out from lack of oxygen.I took it back to Woolworths the week I brought it. It skipped badly on my Sony Vaio - my computer is my audio rig, and with the speaks I had hooked up at the time, I certainly wanted it to stay that way.
Just last week I saw the Sarah McLachlan DVD and thought, "stupid drm" and not about the artist. I will force myself to see her in a better light now, but if she's not touring near me, I can't exactly give her the money I want to (by buying her material) because although she's going the right away about things _now_, her cds on the shelf are still DRMed.
In the end I was forced to I download Afterglow. I became a pirate because I couldnt experience the music on my, and on my creative zen.
For an artist I discovered via napster a long time ago, this sure does suck. Are they trying to lock me out of the market, or really fence us into a no-rip-no-choice era? Either way I see it, when I can't use WhateverAMP and my mp3 player, they've lost me as a customer.
Matt
Wow, that represents about 80% of my beat-off fantasy time right there.
No need to post as AC to admit that. Now, if you'd said Gordon Lightfoot and Bryan Adams on the other hand...
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
TFA: "Canada's leading artists to speak for themselves."
Yet there is no mention of Bryan Adams.
What kind of a hoax is this?
I was going to blog about this, but I'm feeling lazy tonight.
First of all, like RMS, I hate applying the term "piracy" to non-commercial copyright violations, so I won't use that term. Instead, I'll call it what it is, unauthorized copying.
Unauthorized copying is to the RIAA what "terrorism" is to the Bush Adminstration, namely, a scapegoat and a straw man argument with which to justify draconian legislation and to garner (barely) sufficient public support for any new legislation favoured by both institutions.
As the Bush Adminstration maintains the conditions (ex: War on Iraq) to indirectly promote terrorism, it justifies renewing the Patriot Act on the basis that it will "help stop terrorism". To make a blatantly obvious statement, the goal of the Patriot Act does not in any way, shape, or form have anything whatsoever to do with stop terrorists, but is instead intended to grant the government the ability to further spy on and control its citizens.
In the same vein, I believe that the RIAA wishes to maintain a certain level of unauthorized copying because it will allow them to justify legislation such as the DMCA and the broadcast flag. The goal of such legislation is not to eliminate or even substantially reduce unauthorized copying, but to maintain control over the industry and keep out fledging competitors, such as independent artists who would have otherwise been promoted through P2P, and to maintain their antiquated business models, which for all intents and purposes should have become obsolete.
So, it's all an elaborate shell game on their part.
This space left intentionally blank.
"...we wouldn't have to download torrents!"
"But we would download torrents! In fact, we'd just download more!"
ShortFormBlog: Writing a little. Saying a lot.
>> Avril Lavigne
I don't know anything about the person or her music, but that name always sounds like a feminine hygiene product to me.
For security, the MD5 hash of this message and sig is 09f911029d74e35bd84156c5635688c0.
It's no surprise that Avril Lavigne would do something like this... given her huge punk heritage and following, her fans would definitely get pissed off and leave her negative® text messages if she didn't rebel.
Here's what these artists are saying...
On DRM: "Consumers should be able to transfer the music they buy to other formats under a right of fair use, without having to pay twice."
On P2P file sharing: "Fans who share music are not thieves or pirates. Sharing music has been happening for decades."
On DMCA "the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act is one of the world's most draconian pieces of intellectual-property law."
On Lawsuits: "Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical. We do not want to sue our fans. The labels have been suing our fans against our will, and laws enabling these suits cannot be justified in our names."
Members include: Sum 41, Blue Rodeo, Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne, Sarah McLachlan, Our Lady Peace and Sloan to name a few.
It looks like at least a few artists have come to realize that the music industry cartel's stand on DRM is not helpful to artists. If they can get more artists on the bandwagon, they may be able to influence the debate. It's a helluva lot more difficult for the labels to convince people that DRM "helps artists" when the artists themselves are against it.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Their last ("You forgot it in people") album had a limited initial run with the copy protection. When the band found out they put a stop to it. See this link for an interview excerpt. Mind you, they're the biggest act on Arts&Crafts' label so that probably had a huge influence too.
I actually bought the copy-protected one (which wasn't labeled as such) and the label offered to replace it. HMV wouldn't.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
Or you could have gone to https://www.werkshop.com/sarahmp3/index.jsp where you can purchase a few of her cds in mp3 or flac format and avoided DRM altogether.
Anyone remember... We fooled you, huh? We're sneaky like that.
It's almost enough to forgive them for inflicting Celine Dion on us....
From this article. I remember reading this in the Toronto Star as well, which I haven't forgotten since:
The Barenaked Ladies' Ed Robertson also wades in with, "I'm totally fine with people downloading music, as long as they steal everything that they want. If you want pants, go steal them. If you need gas in your car, you should steal it, because you can. As long as people are consistent I don't have a problem. As long as they see themselves as thieves in general then I don't mind if they steal everything that they like. But it irks me that it's only okay to steal music."
So at least one of them is against sharing/downloading.
Wearing pants should always be optional.
I just sent them a short email thanking them for understanding that their fans are mostly NOT thieves. Is it any wonder that I in fact already own most of the CDs from most of the artists in that coalition?
:)
Proud to be a Canadian today.
P.S. I especially like what's on their front page as the #1 bullet:
1. Suing Our Fans is Destructive and Hypocritical
Well duh?! When was that last time you saw a successful business model where you sue the pants out of your customers?
AirSpeak - http://itunes.com/apps/AirSpeak
I suppose the title uses the term "music" loosely.
4 words buddy.
Britney Spears and nSync
Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house
And you know what we're filling them with? Some of the most popular bands among my friends have been The Arcade Fire, Death From Above 1979, Controller Controllor, Broken Social Scene, Hawksley Workman, Joel Plaskett Emergency, Jimmy Swift Band, Matt Mays, and countless others. Many of them allow their live shows to be traded on etree.
You want to know why these groups are popular? They tour a lot, play a lot of gigs, put on great live shows and are overall in it for the music and the fans. We've identified with the artists that put the music before the money and appreciate the innovative sounds and artistic views that they bring.
The true Canadian music scene is alive and prospering already without the help of the major music labels, with or without all their evil tactics. Anyway, at the very least, just check out these bands!
Seems like the usual suspects fighting on the side of consumer rights again. This isn't the first time the growing artistic community around Nettwerk Music Group has attempted to make an impact, even the Nettwerk CEO saying "Litigation is destructive, it must stop .... as per Nettwerk copyrights, we have never sued anybody and all our music is open source to encourage fans to share it with others and help us promote our Artists. As per those Artists we manage on other labels (Majors), we take issue with those labels claiming that litigating our fans is in our interest, as it clearly is not."
None of the major labels would dare utter sacrilege like this. But to be fair, in Canada even the Recording Industry Association (CRIA) is not as virulent as it's ugly cousin to the south. They moderate their message somewhat with more honesty, for example recently releaseing a study showing:
CRIA's own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders' computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services.
(words of Prof. Michael Geist, University of Ottawa)
This is kind of off topic, but it's fresh in my mind. I just got back to my hotel from the EMC World conference in Boston where the Barenaked Ladies were tonight's entertainment. The skinny lead singer guy was talking about how the band was like-minded with the technical crowd. He said, "I've got Windows XP running on my Macbook with an Intel Pro Duo processor". He said it was only so he could update his GPS. That comment got a lot of applause. The wider guy mentioned ethernet and how it was really just tiny pneumatic tubes like at the drive-up bank teller. They were pretty funny guys.
...and with those words, the great Slashdot Canada/USA Music Flamewar of '06 broke out. It was truly the "post read 'round the world."
As a previous poster already pointed out, Nettwerk's own Werkshop sells unencumbered MP3s for $0.99 per track, or $9.99 per album. Lossless FLACs are also available for $10.99 per album and, in some cases, $1.09 per track.
They also sell the Canadian, Nettwerk releases of her CDs, which carry no DRM.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
The Partridge Family. Full House. Mini Pops. Ricky Martin. Bob Barker. Fox News. Everybody loves Raymond. McDonalds. American Idol. Oprah (and Dr. Phil). Paris Hilton. That Kato guy. The list goes on
We exported Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne to see if you'd get the joke. People keep buying tickets, so apparently not.
Oh, and BTW, you can keep Howie Mandell and Alex Trebeck too. We want Shatner back though.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Well, I'd expect that when some of the biggest names in Canadian music speak, the Ministry of Canadian Heritage might just listen. They're about to embark on another attempt to come up with a somewhat less objectionable version of the DMCA, spurred on by lobbyists from the big American record labels.
This isn't about convincing the labels. It'sz about ensuring that the government hears the other viewpoint.
And noting one thing. (I was shown by a tech friend over there) that the locally pirated copies of DVD's and CD's for sale were DRM protected using the exact same protection as the original. You see when you do a bit for bit copy you get an exact copy. DRM only prevents fair use it doesn't even come close to slowing down the back alley black market.
I'm sorry, I'm to tired to be witty at the moment so this message will have to do.
How is this not just a publicity stunt? If they have so many artists, they should start their own label.
Yeah that's a good idea... these people Sarah McLaghlan, the Barenaked Ladies, and others could start a label and call it Nettwerk or something. Except it seems like some other chick names Sarah McLachlan and some other band called the Barenaked Ladies already did.
Bout time somebody without bazillions has a say. Makes sense why come down hard on the fans. I say just make downloaders pay $50 fines when caught. Like speeding tickets. You can NEVER stop people from speeding or downloading p2p, but you can give them a little fine to make them be more cautious. Plus paying $50 from time to time is not big deal. It is not what Shawn Fanning had in mind, but it can work. Paying $5000 for a hard disk with a few hundred songs of music is just insane, and makes people like me ready for a full out boycott. I have not purchased a single CD since they shut Napster down. Poor RIAA dudes don't even know there is a boycott going on, they think illegal downloads are the cause for stale sales. Mostly, I find it ironic and moronic that the record lables laughed in Shawn Fanning's face when he mentioned $5/mo. for unlimmited downloads, and now this is a reality at Yahoo, that's crap. Things like this should not happen. Shawn Fanning was the founder of P2P and he should be as rich as Bill Gates for pioneering a technology, not abused and left out to dry. The RIAA and all supporters of Nazi DRM deserve whats coming to them. Best bet is to BOYCOTT, BOTCOTT, BOYCOTT until this "fair use" deal is resolved in a manner that is acceptable to ALL.
The American have a secret weapon though. We will enter one of your clean cities fully armed and then when confronted we will start to litter. As you Canadians desperately try to pick up our empty cans of shitty American beer and bring them to a recycling station you will be completely vulnerable to our cop killing FMJ semi-automatic assault rifles, grotesquely large hand guns, and the odd red neck wielding a bazooka or machine gun that he bought before they were made illegal.
Canadians fleeing to the recycling station with shitty American beer cans in hand will be easy picking off by our highly skilled red neck population. While our gansta/thug population might be a little questionable in their aim, they will make up for it with round output and shear enthusiasm at being given the chance to bust a cap in yo cracker ass. To the Canadians defense though, our skinny white guy wanna be rappers from the 'burbs will likely take out a few Americans as they hold guns bigger then their head sideways and shoot like fucking retards.
We will send then send in the upper middle suburban punks dressed in 200+ dollar outfits of pre-ripped black jeans, black shirts with an obscure band on it, and metal studs randomly glued on to their clothing to clean up the mess. They will hunt down the surviving Canadians in a desperate attempt to retrieve the empty cans of shitty American beer in the hopes of draining the last drops of swill that might be left at the bottom of the can. The wrist scarred (across the street style, not down the highway) teenaged girls , feminine teenaged guys, and sketchy 40 year old men goths at that point will come out to add insult to injury by read shitty poetry about death and try to one up each other by doing grotesque things to the corpses.
Have no fear though, us Americans are not without compassion and mercy. We will blast some shitty (is there any other type?) emo music over the battlefield and send the emo kids out. They will promptly start to cry. True, they are crying at the memory of their long lost sixth grade girlfriend and lamenting at the difficulty of their inhumanly difficult life living in suburban America, but we can pretend they are crying for lost Canadian souls.
Oh hell, what is a little karma. At least I amuse myself.
Ha ha silly Americans! You think that by dropping shitty American empty beer cans on our pristine cities and heavenly nature reserves that we Canadians will respond with a recycling program ... well then, you should have picked plastic as your litter of choice!
:)
The mere sight of crappy American beer cans {empty or not} brings out the deeply cherished Canadian Hockey Fan in every person who has spent at least one hockey season in Canada.
Sticks will appear {seemingly from nowhere}, pucks will fly faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a speeding locomotive {yeah the big "S" was invented in Canada}, and to add insult to injury skate blades will be used to run over your multitudes, twitching, soon to be remains.
After this induced frenzy has calmed, we Canadains will then politley bandaged any surviving Americans {not many}, administer Tim Horton's coffee and donuts to stablize them, and return them to their home state for medical care.
On the bright side though, the American emo kids will still be there to cry over your remains - primarily because we Canadains are polite and so don't pick on the whiners. Oh that and we'll need the emo kids to carry the empty American beer cans back across the border!
Both your and my karma are now rapidly dropping, but at least you amused me!
Blame Mexico for Ricky Martin. He was in Menudo long before he regained popularity in the 90s.
And you can have Shatner back if we can keep Evangeline Lilly and Elisha Cuthbert. Deal?
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
Do you content that the Diebold voting machines are programmed in a way that makes them favor Republicans over Democrats?
That is really beside the point. The fact that they make wholesale tampering so much easier and so less traceable. When Diebold comes in and "upgrades" the machines with un-certified code before an election, they could really hand the election to whomever they wanted. Is this a good situation as long as they hand the election to the highest bidder or the candidate least likely to regulate voting machines?
Actually, a government law that obligates a company to change how they do business is anti-free market. All the DMCA does is give formal protection to DRM software that precedent normally gave them anyway.
The DMCA very much obligates companies to change how they do business. The DMCA was needed because these controls were not at all supported by precedent. If I wanted to evaluate wall safes, I could buy a bunch and try to break into them. While the DMCA can't currently prevent me from trying, it can certainly prevent me from sharing my findings.
By your definition, all IP, and really all law in general, is anti-free market.
At any rate, you've been quite thoroughly convinced that copy protected music will lead a multitude of other things. Is there anything other than speculation to back any of those up, or is it just hyper-paranoia?
You obviously haven't been paying close attention. DRM is already extending much further than music. The DMCA has already prompted law suites in areas such as printer catrideges and garage door openers. Trusted computing has a lot of potential change how computers can be used.