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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 !
Why don't American artist replicate this type of coalition? We let Canada beat us!! Canada!
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
It may not have been her choice, or she may have not even known about it until it was too late. I imagine that the people in charge of such things don't really care what the artists think, as long as they get their piles money.
Omnes stulti sunt.
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?
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.
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.
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
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.
It's almost enough to forgive them for inflicting Celine Dion on us....
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.
So at least one of them is against sharing/downloading.
Actually, they could all be against sharing and downloading: nothing in their stance says "we think it's OK for you to download music without paying for it." What they've said is that they think the RIAA lawsuits are wrong, which is a totally separate issue from whether you think downloading music is morally wrong or right in the first place.
You can still be an artist, and dislike it when people steal your music, but think that the RIAA has gone way too far. Likewise, I'm against shoplifting but I wouldn't want them to start chopping people's hands off for it; I can be against chopping people's hands off and still be "anti shoplifting."
The black and white attitude where anyone who's anti-RIAA or anti-lawsuits is automatically pro-filesharing is just what the RIAA would like you to believe. It's an automatic "with us or against us." I'm not necessarily saying that you said that, but I think a lot of people make that assumption and I was just taking your comment as an opportunity to clear it up.
Just because somebody hates the RIAA/MPAA doesn't mean they think it's necessarily right to just go on Kazaa/BitTorrent and download stuff without somehow compensating the artists for it.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
4 words buddy.
Britney Spears and nSync
Don't throw stones when you live in a glass house
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)
...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 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!