CEA President Slams RIAA Audio Flag

Grv writes "The president of the Consumer Electronics Association isn't happy with the RIAA. According to Ars Technica, Gary Shapiro accuses the RIAA of trying to shut off fair use by pushing for laws like the audio broadcast flag. Apparently the RIAA is all talk and no action, however, as Shapiro laments the fact that the organization has failed to come up with an implementation plan or even attend meetings with the industry. This has angered electronics companies and radio stations who have pressed ahead with digital radio plans only to see the RIAA backtrack on its support for home recording."

Comments

Old tactics

[melchoir55]

It almost seems as if the RIAA is actually *trying* to piss off as many people as possible. Has anyone examined the current chairman to see if he has any inclings towards being a comedian?

Re:Old tactics

[TubeSteak]

lest he see the light like Hilary Rosen sort of did.

Lawyers and Corporate Officers are paid to hold certain positions and say certain things. That is their job and no, they aren't allowed to contradict their official position while they're off the clock. Since Hilary Rosen doesn't work for 'Them' anymore, she's free to criticize all she likes.

All that said, "image" is much more important than "results" when it comes to anything that wouldn't fit into the corporate game plan. It makes tons of sense for the RIAA to propose and/or setup a completely ineffective technical group for the broadcast flag, because without a law in place, they don't have any significant amount of control over what can or cannot be done.

Once the law is passed, they can rush through technical implementations and force the HW guys to comply, even if (portions of) the law is utter shiat and wouldn't hold up in a court room. At that point, it doesn't matter what a Judge says, because the hardware specs are already in place.

Well,doy!

[Itninja]

FTA:
Shapiro's statement reflects a growing awareness among many technology advocates, and a long-held position at Ars Technica, that digital rights management schemes can be abused to create new revenue models at the expense of fair use, and the truth.

Can be abused? CAN BE!? This is a capitalist, corporate-driven nation. I think it would be more accurate to say that there is a "possibilty" that it "might not" be abused.

Vicious Circle

[Saxerman]

It used to require expensive equipment to record music, but now near professional recordings can be had with equipment in the sub thousands of dollars range. The price of booking time in professional grade studios has plummeted, so bands without the technical wherewithal to record their own tracks can pay near-reasonable fees to indy-band studios (shameless plug: http://www.joelwanasek.com/) and have it done professionally.

It's now been four years since I last purchased music from a RIAA label. Not only do I completely disagree with their business practices, but I consider them a legacy business model that has a greatly diminished role in a digital world. Unfortunately most musicians I know either disagree with me, or don't care enough to make a stand. Mostly they just want to play music rather than get into some philosophical debate over technology or copyright.

Despite my preaching, a friend of mine in a local band (shameless plug: http://www.rictusgrin.com/home) would still be willing to sign with a major label. They are currently still independent, but if given a set of terms they could live with, the desire to quit their day jobs and become 'professional musicians' is bigger than any self publishing model they've been able to cook up. And that means not giving away the music for free on the chance to sign it over to a 'real' label.

It's either irony or payback

[MrAndrews]

It's either irony or payback that the RIAA - which complained bitterly about tech companies disregarding their investments during the filesharing boom - are now giddily disregarding the investments electronics companies have made in producing the next generation of audio systems. I mean, it's not like they weren't aware the discussions about new standards were going on. I think they're purposely keeping at arm's length so they can claim they didn't have a say in the implementation. It's like making an architect promise to make an invincible fortress, and then not participating in the design, because you want any potential failure to be entirely on the architect's head.

The good part is that it looks like the RIAA is at least partially aware that DRM is destined to fail, because they seem to be setting someone else up to take the fall when it does. It's like the silver lining on a very, very dark cloud.

Just use the evil bit!!

[QRDeNameland]

FTA:

The RIAA is a late-comer to the "flag"-method of content control, which can be generically described as follows: mandate all broadcasters to use technology to embed mandated "flags" that are then "respected" by hardware designed under mandate to obey the mandatory behavior.

Why devise a new solution when a fitting solution already exists?

Um, what?

[radiotyler]

According to a statement from Mr. Shapiro's office earlier this week, the RIAA revealed in a letter to Congressman Rick Boucher (D-VA) that they have "no technical specification for an audio flag," and that the "RIAA has stayed away from the Copy Protection Technical Working Group in part because it has nothing to propose."

So around where I work we have a bit of not-so-clever anology for things like this: "gifts from the good idea fairy". Someone comes up with a marvelous idea with no idea how to make it work and plays "pass the trash" handing it off to the nerd patrol hoping they can find a solution to implement their very clever, over-thought, and probably useless idea. There is no arguing fact against the GIF and its basket of joy.

So what happens when you have a broadcaster that isn't meeting the requirements of a broadcast flag that has no standard, protocol, or you know, form of any mention? How do you hold someone to a standard that doesn't exist?

If garbage like this gets through, I expect to see many, many different flags created by different companies that don't play well together, aren't cross platform for the range of hardware used for both broadcasting and listening, and create a broadcast flag format war. Maybe this is the goal: to create such a murky and fuddled bit of legislation that the end goal is blurred even more and it becomes more difficult to find a standard and common ground, further extending the mess that's already created.

I don't know who wins in such a situation, but I know it's not me as a consumer.

Professional recording is still expensive

[mangu]

It used to require expensive equipment to record music, but now near professional recordings can be had with equipment in the sub thousands of dollars range.

When you do professional level recording, as opposed to talented amateur level, the biggest expense is not equipment, but studio. A studio suited for recording must have sound insulation and acoustics that are as expensive to get today as they have always been.

Basically, sound insulation needs double or triple walls built of materials that are sound dampening at all frequencies, which means high mass. Building two ceilings and two walls of concrete or solid brick, plus a double layer of concrete floor that rests on high density urethane foam isn't cheap. And then you come to the acoustics part. All the above mentioned room needs to be big enough to have acceptable reverberation times. Or else the walls, ceiling, and floor need to have a thick layer of echo dampening material and the reverberation added digitally. Not cheap either.

However, having said all that, I agree with you that the RIAA business model is dinosaur carrion today. What I cannot imagine is how backyard "pirates" can compete will industrial scale production. For instance, let's compare music with a traditional product: steel nails. Anyone can make a nail at home, with less equipment and time than it takes to copy a CD. Get a piece of steel wire, a hammer and an anvil. Flatten one end of the wire to make a head, pinch the other end to make a point, and there you are: a nail! But why would anyone make a steel nail at home when any hardware store will sell you nails by the barrel at a reasonable price? The common sizes of nails are so cheap that they won't even sell them by the unit, the smaller amount of nails you can buy are boxes with twenty or so.

Generalizing from nails to all kind of fasteners, counting nails, screws, bolts, rivets, etc, there are more standard catalog types of fasteners in the market then CD titles available. So, why can't I get a 1/8"x1/2" round headed screw from the street vendor? Because hardware is priced according to the traditional free market rules. Calculate what your investment will get you at the bank, see if you can get a better margin selling hardware, price your fasteners slightly better than the bank will pay you, taking into account other factors such as risk and liquidity.

The error in the media and software industries is that they forgot capitalism and the free market and tried to invent their own rules. Their prices aren't based on the traditional formulas, they are trying to price their products based on the extreme outliers. If anybody at all is willing to pay $25 for a CD they assume that's the right price for all CDs.

The correct formula, under the capitalist system that has been working for centuries would be, if it costs $0.90 to produce and sell a CD, if the bank pays you 6%, then selling the CD at $1.00 is an excellent business proposition. Multiplying the price by 25 will lower the market by a factor of more than 25, it's not worth it.

Re:Dianne Feinstein, PERFORM Act

[Ph33r th3 g(O)at]

You're wasting your toner. She's bought and paid for.

defeating dem new fangled copy protection measures

[gsn]

All the music piracy told me is that a lot of people will happily accept a lower quality version of some content if it comes to them free. Why - because the actual content doesn't have the right value for money - its DRM laden and doesn't respect fair use, or its not as portable as a digital file or even *gasp* the actual content is just not worth enough to merit buying outright.

Lower quality as in someone buys a nice recording setup, and a nice set of speakers and records something the completely analog way - stick one next to the other and hit record and play at the same time. If the sound reproduction in this digital era is supposed to be so damned good and we get better and better at making recordings - after all someone has to record the artists themselves at some point - then you can end up with a decent sounding copy without drm in whatever format you like with no copy protection.

And thus you defeated the audio broadcast flag.

(BTW please stop any of you who want to preach about me not needing any content I don't consider worth buying-the whole point of whats happening is that this era enables you to have things you don't aboslutely love but do want like that Phil Collins song you get in the random mood to listen to once in a year)

Thats not the answer and I don't suggest doing that though it is guaranteed to work. All I want is content thats high quality, respects fair use, and is cheap enough that its not worth my while to engage in piracy. Yes you will still get ripped CDs but that may not translate into distribution, because frankly I've better things to do with with the time I spend on my computer than hunting down Phil bloody Collings mp3s ;-)

We Need to Rename the RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

The RIAA moniker conveys that it's a broad-based association, when in fact it's a front for the big four, a cartel. Why not use a more evocative name, one that makes it hard for Warner, Sony, Universal and EMI to hide.

How about WESU, pronounced 'We Sue'. Or perhaps WUSE, pronounced (variously), 'Wuss', 'Wussy', or 'We Use'?

So for every post on RIAA, s/RIAA/WESU/g'....

How far would you go back?

[Myria]

As for promoting Arts and Sciences -- have you ever thought the fact that Copyright being Infinite could promote arts and sciences?

So you would like to pay the modern Shakespeare family for Hamlet? Or how about all Iraqis for the epic of Gilgamesh?

Melissa