International Music Industry Amps Up Anti-P2P War

newtley writes to mention a BBC article discussing a new initiative against file-sharers by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. This international version of the MPAA is breathing down the necks of 8,000 users of file-sharing software. From the article: "The new cases cover file sharers in 17 different countries who have been allegedly using sites including BitTorrent, eDonkey, SoulSeek and WinMX. For the first time legal action is being taken in Brazil, Mexico and Poland. The IFPI said the actions affect a wide-variety of people: a laboratory assistant has been charged in Finland, while a parson has been served with action in Germany."

Comments

In Other News

[eldavojohn]

In other news today, several socialist countries have launched The Pro-P2P International Socialist Society (PISS).

This international version of 'everybody but the MPAA' is opening new cases against people & their sites that are allegedly attempting to sell digital copies of music that they themselves did not write or perform. The chair and spokesman of PISS, Mr. Blackbeard, said, "Aye, PISS is pissed. Digital music should be provided on the cheap--a utility the likes of water or that magic electricity ... Yarrr. Perhaps ye government could subsidize ye artists and let the people get jigs & tunes for free?"

These lawsuits will affect a wide-variety of people: a programmer who coded a few lines of the Windows DRM algorithm, while Steve Jobs is facing seven life sentences in the gulags and is considered to be armed and advertising.

Re:In Other News

[griffjon]

That's not the complete acronym, it's actually the Pro-P2P International Socialist Society Of Free File-Sharers (PISSOFF).

Re:In Other News

[ehrichweiss]

Wish I still had mod points, I'd mod you +eleventy-one hilare!

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

Boycott! The music industry only has as much power as we give them. Buying or Downloading music gives them the ability to tell us what it's worth, but if we just turn it off, it's worth nothing. I love music just as much as the next person, but they need to know that we are in control, not them.

Re:In Other News

[aplusjimages]

Consumer revolution is where its at. Too bad we can't get the masses to join in. So for now the music industry has us by the balls.

Re:In Other News

[macdaddy357]

I agree. Boycotting is the only recourse consumers have. But there is one other thing I have to say. Do not call the recording industry the music industry. Plastic disks are a commodity produced by an industry, music is not. It has been around since the dawn of time, not just since the invention of the phonograph. It is best enjoyed live, not on any payback medium. It in many forms that the recording industry bloodsuckers don't think they can make a buck off of, and ignore. No industry owns music.

Re:In Other News

[Anonymous Coward]

n other news today, several socialist countries have launched The Pro-P2P International Socialist Society (PISS).

The Pro-P2P International Socialist Society Organization of Free Filesharing probably would be better. (PISS-OFF)

Re:In Other News

[NulDevice]

Nicely put. As a musician, I thank you.

What Organization?

[imaginaryelf]

Whoa! Am I the only one that read: the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry and did a double take?

Re:What Organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope - I read it like that too.

Re:What Organization?

[Panaqqa]

The real pornography here lies in how the *AA is screwing the artists and the consumers at the same time.

Re:What Organization?

[SatanicPuppy]

Makes more sense than Phonographic, frankly. Just goes to show how out of date those bastards are. If they had their way we'd still be listening to music on wax spools.

Seriously. This is the first format we've ever had that actually had the possibility of being constant quality for the indefinite future, with lossless transference between devices. I mean records got scratched, or degraded in quality over time, magnetic tape stretches, and is super prone to mechanical defects, cd's oxidize and have the alumnium fall off, but digital audio files, not being tied to a player, are a real threat.

Buy the White Album on CD and rip it to the format of your choice, and you'll never have to buy it again (assuming you back up your data). There is no way people will go back to the old "Tied to a chunk of physical stuff" method of information distribution. I just wish they would hurry up and realize this, instead of trying so hard to wish it true.

Re:What Organization?

[carpe_noctem]

Yes. Now put your other hand back up on the keyboard, please.

Re:What Organization?

[oahazmatt]

Whoa! Am I the only one that read: the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry and did a double take?

I read it that way, too. Furthermore, I realized if the Porn Industry did fight back against P2P Networks, the internet may very well just stop.

Re:What Organization?

[dmitrygr]

...and you'll never have to buy it again...

...Which is their main concern...

Re:What Organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

Whoa! Am I the only one that read: the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry and did a double take?

No, you're not the only one. Now THAT would have been a big worry, as at least 90% of what you find on the p2p networks is pr0n.

Re:What Organization?

[jb.hl.com]

If they had their way we'd still be listening to music on wax spools....Buy the White Album on CD and rip it to the format of your choice, and you'll never have to buy it again (assuming you back up your data)

So they'd want everyone to still be on wax spools, but they want everyone to buy things in new formats. That makes no sense.

You do realise the RIAA etc have nothing against digital distribution, just so long as the record labels and artists that they represent get paid for what people download, don't you? They don't sue Apple, or Napster (the paid download service Napster, that is), or any other online stores.

You're barking up the wrong tree. There's a very big difference between the RIAA opposing digital distribution as whole (which they don't, even if they were certainly late to the game) and the RIAA opposing random, anonymous people distributing the work of the artists they represent for free.

Re:What Organization?

[Admin_Jason]

It's called built in obsolescence. Light bulb manufacturers use the same methods in their process. They could be more efficient and produce blubs that last for 5 years (and some do with the halogen or flourescent blubs or whatever), but that doesn't make good business sense for incandescant scene as it would be rendered obsolete and they would put themselves out of business through lack of product recycling.

Re:What Organization?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

you forgot to mention that they ARE opposed to digital distribution UNLESS it is crippled with DRM to the point that I more than likely WILL have to buy it AGAIN.

Re:What Organization?

[jb.hl.com]

That's a different argument entirely. The OP was presenting it as "the RIAA hates digital distribution", not "the RIAA hates un-DRMed digital distribution". Not to mention, eMusic has many RIAA-represented bands' music in non-DRMed MP3 format.

Re:What Organization?

[drinkypoo]

Actually they already product bulbs that last for 50-100,000 hours, they're called LED lamps, and they're way expensive so people don't buy them. The flourescents are the ones that last, but they put out a shitty light that's got way too much blue in it. Blue is the least important color to human vision (in that it's the color we see the least, so we depend on it the least) and that's mostly what a cool white flourescent (the most common kind for flourescent home lighting) puts out.

Re:What Organization?

[daem0n1x]

So, why do I have to put up with copy protected CDs that I can't rip to listen to in my office? I don't mean pirating anything, just fair use.
I subscribe to EMusic.com, that sells non-DRM MP3s. Why is the catalog so limited? There are many things that I could buy, but they are not offered in EMusic, and I'm not spending € 18,00 for some stupid copy-protected CD, so their strategy is shoting their own foot. The so called "labels and the artists they represent" are actually preventing me from being their customer.
Anyway, it's not about the artists , of course. They get a ridiculous amount for each sold CD. The record companies business is all about delivering very very little for a huge amount. Let them all go bankrupcy, I won't miss those leaches! And neither the artists, too.

Re:What Organization?

[Admin_Jason]

Right - it's the tungsten bulbs that drive the industry and these have designed obsolescence built in. Sure there are better bulbs out, but as you indicated, they are either too expensive or too blue. The overarching point is that the tungsten bulb, by design is planned to die so you have to buy a replacement. This concept is what was alluded to in SatanicPuppy's comment about product constancy over time.

Re:What Organization?

[Hijacked Public]

Despite your record levels of self absorption and what I hope is a sticking caps lock key, I doubt the RIAA cares about whether you specifically will have to buy your digital music again.

What they do care about is finding a way to prevent digital music files from being distributed without their consent. At the present the best way they have determined to accomplish that is DRM.

Re:What Organization?

[keyne9]

This is the first format we've ever had that actually had the possibility of being constant quality for the indefinite future, with lossless transference between devices. I mean records got scratched, or degraded in quality over time, magnetic tape stretches, and is super prone to mechanical defects, cd's oxidize and have the alumnium fall off, but digital audio files, not being tied to a player, are a real threat.

Uh, duh. How are the 'industries supposed to charge for replacements if their goods can never go defective?

Re:What Organization?

[Ilex]

You are so wrong. The RIAA do oppose digital distribution. They sued Diamond Multimedia who produced the RIO. The worlds first mass market mp3 player. Had they won there wouldn't be any IPOD's or Music phones today. They are also currently suing a Satalite radio service for their PVR recorder.

The RIAA are against any and all forms of music distribution which they don't understand. Read 'Control'!

Re:What Organization?

[1u3hr]

Whoa! Am I the only one that read: the International Federation of the Pornographic Industry and did a double take?

No, someone makes the same joke every time they're mentioned. Eg http://politics.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=19124 0&cid=15721315

And amazingly enough, they often also get +5 funny. The mods must be goldfish.

Re:What Organization?

[jZnat]

The artists eventually die or stop publishing good music, so they can replace the artists instead and offer, I dunno, new music? What a concept!

Re:What Organization?

[pwizard2]

The RIAA only opposes digital distribution that they don't completely control.

Re:What Organization?

[bcat24]

Arrgh! Bad mental images, bad!

Re:What Organization?

[Onan]

Nonsense.

The whole point of the post to which you're replying is that, as evaluated by the market, non-incandescent bulbs are _not_ better. They are longer-lasting, which is one of many attributes that go into the overall decision of "better".

The idea that the light-bulb industry has intentionally designed incandescent bulbs to fail is silly. First of all, I don't really think that there _is_ a hugely powerful lightbulb industry; given the almost nonexistant margins and barrier to entry, they can't be making money hand over fist.

Secondly, incandescent lighting is just crap technology, and bulbs fail. They're not "by design ... planned to die so you have to buy a replacement", they die because that's an inevitable result of the technology on which they're based.

But it's cheap, so people keep choosing it anyway. That's not the result of shady deals between lightbulb barons in smoky back rooms, it's just consumers making rational decisions about the products available to them.

Re:What Organization?

[paladinwannabe2]

Yeah, but +5 funny doesn't give any karma, so it doesn't matter.

Re:What Organization?

[Admin_Jason]

Actually, the OP to which I was replying was the fact that the medium for music has evolved from record to tape to CD and is now playable in a digital format which suggests that it has a much much longer lifespan - limited only by the drive that it is saved on. Granted these do crash, but the premise is that if you backup your data, you can perpetuate your music files indefinitely. How can you perpetuate a light bulb?

Re:What Organization?

[kfg]

Makes more sense than Phonographic. . .

Phonograph means "A record of sound."

KFG

Re:What Organization?

[quincunx55555]

I realized if the Porn Industry did fight back against P2P Networks, the internet may very well just stop.

Don't you mean that it would get it's tubes tied?

Re:What Organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What they do care about is finding a way to prevent digital music files from being distributed without their consent. At the present the best way they have determined to accomplish that is DRM."

DRM combined with scare-tactic lawsuits, many times (not always) threating with fabricated evidence in the hopes that people will settle out of court before going to trial.

Re:What Organization?

[SatanicPuppy]

eMusic is a bad example; the RIAA used to throw out "up and coming" acts on wide release samplers on tape, and later cd. This is just more of the same. If any of those acts should actually become popular, they'll remove the non-DRM distribution.

The point is not the format. The point is the control of distribution and the perishable nature of the media. They've come to depend on contant obsolesence as a part of their revenue stream, and now that's pretty much shot. They depended on CD sales continuing to increase, but evidence suggests than they've peaked for good, due to the amount of DRM they put on CDs these days, and the prevalence of mp3 players as one of the primary music devices.

Re:What Organization?

[Hijacked Public]

Certainly the case.

Re:What Organization?

[TheRaven64]

Actually, it means a picture of sound. Considering WinAMP/iTunes/Whatever visualisations, I'd say this is even more relevant now than it was when the term was coined.

Re:What Organization?

[nizo]

I'm just glad they are only worried about people with record players; I had no idea there was such a problem with people pirating records!

Re:What Organization?

[kfg]

A digital recording is a series of discrete mathematical points used to represent the sound.

KFG

Re:What Organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

but it is far easier to pop out "average" pr0n then it is with average music.

Re:What Organization?

[hjf]

bullshit. I use color 84 lamps from Philips, they give out very nice light, "tri-phosphor" coating with added red that compensates for the excess blue. The standard color is 54 and is the regular fluorescent lamp we all know. I personally like color 84 but there's also 83 (warmer) and 86 (colder). I use 36W lamps, model TLD36W840 (tube) and PL-L 36W/840/4P (PL). They are WAY expensive (3 or 4 times more than the regulars) but... it's just $4 vs. $1,50 ! They are expensive because these are made in the Netherlands (tubes) and Poland (PL). And they don't flicker (I even live in a 50Hz country). But even if that annoys you, you can always use a 20KHz ballast, that also gives you instant start.

Re:What Organization?

[Dun Malg]

So they'd want everyone to still be on wax spools, but they want everyone to buy things in new formats. That makes no sense.

But it does make sense. He was mostly just being facetious with the "wax spools" bit, but there's a grain of truth behind it that goes right along with the recording industry's main aim. Back in the "olden days" of analog vinyl (and to some degree even wax cylinders), the recording industry basically gained cartel control over the business of distributing audio recordings because the equipment to make recordings was fairly expensive. One of the things they enjoyed with vinyl records was a certain degree of perishability, i.e. a record is only good for a certain number of plays before the physical contours in the record grooves began to wear down. Indeed, I find it quite likely that "if the RIAA ran the world" everyone would still happily pay for their favorite albums every 2-5 years to replace the old worn out copy. Given that they don't run the world, and that technological progress is unavoidable, they've opted for the next best thing: changing the latest and greatest audio format as the market will allow, essentially making people re-purchase all their favorite music for the new format. It's the next best thing to media that wears out. Heck, the recording industry's wet dream is a new format that you'll have to re-buy your content in, with an intentional obsolescence system (e.g. discs that decay when exposed to air). Fortunately, that's gotten the cold reception it deserves. But what really scares them is purely digital distribution. They're in the business of making and selling physical objects encoded with music. That worked great for them because they controlled the means of producing these physical objects. Now that music no longer requires a dedicated physical object, but rather can be copied to a readily available and cheaply obtained generic digital recording device with no loss of quality, they're facing the obsolescence of their entire means of making money.

Re:What Organization?

[Dun Malg]

Right - it's the tungsten bulbs that drive the industry and these have designed obsolescence built in.

The short bulb life is a side effect of the "race to the bottom", not an intentional feature. Cheaper bulbs are made to sloppier tolerances, which result in shorter lives (1,000-2,000 hours for typical chinese crap bulbs). You can buy tungsten filament bulbs that last 10,000-plus hours, but they cost three times as much. Consumers are almost completely incapable of figuring out that 75 cents for 2000 hours is more expensive than $2.50 for 10,000 hours, so the cheaper bulb nearly always wins. The obsolescence is no more "planned" than is the short lifespan of a cheap ratchet set compared to a set made by Snap-On.

Re:What Organization?

[Anonymous Coward]

The real pornography here lies in how the *AA is screwing the artists and the consumers at the same time.

Yup. Double anal, no lubricants.

Re:What Organization?

[bit01]

Consumers are almost completely incapable of figuring out that 75 cents for 2000 hours is more expensive than $2.50 for 10,000 hours, so the cheaper bulb nearly always wins.

Not true. I understand this but I often still buy the cheaper bulb. Why? Buying cheap reduces the downside risk; I have no way of guaranteeing that what I'm buying will last 10,000 hours.

Profit maximization means that companies often attempt to sell cheap products as if they were high quality and will often allow brands to go downmarket to do this.

We need "truth in advertising" laws that are strongly enforced, rather than the joke they are now, before consumers can make informed choices.

---

Marketing talk is not just cheap, it has negative value. Free speech can be compromised just as much by too much noise as too little signal.

Re:What Organization?

[AcidLacedPenguiN]

Last I checked I wasn't self absorbed. . . Please elaborate on why my legitimate concerns about getting screwed over by the RIAA is self absorption?

Re:What Organization?

[mdwh2]

The OP's point was music in a format that "you'll never have to buy it again". I.e., digital without DRM.

Personal boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I don't buy music anymore (No I don't pirate it either).

Re:Personal boycott

[SamSim]

Isn't shoplifting kinda risky though?

Re:Personal boycott

[Anonymous Coward]

And this is why I don't buy music anymore (No I don't pirate it either).

I don't buy (or pirate) music either. But it has nothing to do with my being far more honest than the RIAA:

It's for pretty much the same reason I don't go 'round sniffing piles of dog poop on the sidewalk.

Phono-nono!

[Rob T Firefly]

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

Fucksocks! How will I download my pirated vinyl records and bootleg wax cylinders now?

Re:Phono-nono!

[Anonymous Coward]

Fucksocks! How will I download my pirated vinyl records and bootleg wax cylinders now?

Like every other bootlegger did before digital file share, make cheap ass presses out of the originals or dub multiple copies on cassette and post them to your closest bootleg buddies.

Re:Phono-nono!

[42nnn]

Fucksocks! is the funniset shit ive heard all day!

Re:Phono-nono!

[general_re]

"Fucksocks"?

I must be getting old...

Re:Phono-nono!

[StarvingSE]

Fucksocks!

Best...Word...Ever

Re:Phono-nono!

[andphi]

You just need a rapid prototyper. Hook it up to your computer, feed it some wax or vinyl, and it can cut the discs for you! You'll be back in the physical music piracy business in no time.

Now if I can get mine to rapidly prototype me a cheeseburger . . . Or some Earl Grey tea.

Re:Phono-nono!

[puppet10]

Don't worry you'll still be able to take your buggy and get them at the general store, just remember to pick up a spare buggy whip.

MPAA != RIAA

[ColinPL]

This international version of the MPAA

of the RIAA

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[jackjeff]

They're the same bandits anyway!!! ;)

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[Opportunist]

They're fully interchangeable anyway. If you happen to start working for the other one, simply strike "illegal music distribution" and put in "illegal film distribution" instead. The rest, same bullspit.

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[rezac]

But you are forgetting that

MPAA(business.model) = RIAA(business.model)

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[arth1]

Why don't we just call them the MAFIAA? It's clear that they operate from the same principles, as a "family" using bully tactics. The big difference is that the Cosa Nostra has better music these days.

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Music And Film Industry Associations of America?

Oh yes.

Re:MPAA != RIAA

[Zerathdune]

This post got so much better when I realized you didn't come up with the acronym yourself.

Wrong organizations

[klingens]

The IFPI is the international counterpart of the RIAA not MPAA. The MPAA is movies, the RIAA is music, the IFPI is music.

Canadian levies

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't wait to see the first Canadian sued, then him/her countersuing this group and/or the SOCAN for their levies since copying is legal for personnal usage in Canada.

Re:Canadian levies

[lRem]

Also, good luck with suing in Poland. Sharing your music, and breaking the DRM, is perfectly legal here as long as you don't make money (or other material gains) on it.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Copying for personal use is exempt from copyright infringement within Canada, this is true, but this exemption does not apply if one is sharing it with others, which is a key point of P2P services. The levies on blank media here do not exist for the purpose of granting any particular license to copy copyrighted works (for personal use or otherwise), they only exist to compensate the recording industries for such copying. One may ask what possible reason could exists for why they should be compensated for something that's not copyright infringement anyways, but responding to it by doing the wrong thing just because one believes oneself is entitled to do so because one thinks that they are doing something wrong first is at the very least falling prey to the "Tit for Tat" ethical fallacy (which is often expressed as "two wrongs don't make a right").

Re:Canadian levies

[alexo]

Copying for personal use is exempt from copyright infringement within Canada, this is true, but this exemption does not apply if one is sharing it with others

Are you sure about that?
Really really sure?
No doubt about it?

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

The natural and inevitable extension of file sharing of copyrighted works without permission from the copyright holder being legal in Canada is the complete dissolution of Copyright within Canada's borders. Levies will not do anything to change this.

So unless Copyright does not have a future in Canada, yes, I'm sure.

Re:Canadian levies

[computational super]

copying is legal for personnal usage in Canada

In theory, it's legal here in the US, too (although it's a bit murkier). However, whether it's legal or not has been made irrelevant - bypassing DRM is illegal, and the goal is to make sure that you need to bypass DRM in order to make a personal copy. So you can't legally do it without breaking the law.

Re:Canadian levies

[Slithe]

IANAL, if you are referring to the DMCA, only distributing knowledge of how to bypass DRM routines is illegal. Cracking the DRM for your own use should still be legal as long as you do not pass along information about how to crack DRM.

Re:Canadian levies

[Anonymous Coward]

... the "Tit for Tat" ethical fallacy (which is often expressed as "two wrongs don't make a right").

That's also a bunch of crap. Usually the "two wrongs" canard is trotted out only when a more powerful entity is screwing a less powerful entity. When the minor player starts to assert their own claim. it's considered to be the "second wrong". Everyone dances around chanting the BS mantra to keep the minor player fron getting what is justly theirs, while completely ignoring the ongoing wrong of the major player.

e.g. you steal something of mine, which I cannot prove is mine, according to some arcane legal formula. But if I'm caught stealing it back, I'm in legal trouble. No effort will be expended by the law to stop the ongoing wrong of the original thief. Screw them all. If I'm morally right in recovering my property, they can all go to hell.

Re:Canadian levies

[alexo]

Well, the court disagrees with your interpretation.
Whom am I going to believe?

Re:Canadian levies

[Anonymous Coward]

IANAL, if you are referring to the DMCA, only distributing knowledge of how to bypass DRM routines is illegal. Cracking the DRM for your own use should still be legal as long as you do not pass along information about how to crack DRM.

Big deal. Even if true, that only means that the knowledge of how to crack DRM has to be independently discovered by each person who wants to use it. What a bullshit concept. DRM is a crap law designed to protect the powerful against the nearly powerless. When Lexmark started using cheapshit "encryption" to protect the chips that enforce it's "no third party refills" policy, their management should have been publicly hanged as an example to others who might try to pull the same sleazy trick. But no, the shit-biting courts let the practice stand. They should suffer the same fate as the owners of Lexmark as an example to the next court that thinks of rolling over on their backs and faking orgasms for the **AA.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

The "Tit for tat" ethical argument is the principle that bad or unethical behavior justifies, and somehow makes ethical, unethical behavior intended to counter it. The logical extension of this fallacy is the abandonment of all ethical standards. Through the ages, many have been perplexed at the fact that people who don't play by the rules have an apparent advantage over those who do, and "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em!" has been the rallying cry of those who see the abandonment of values as the only way to prosper.

However, the very concept of ethics assumes that winning isn't the only thing, and that members of a productive society must hold on to ethical standards to preserve the quality of civil existence.

The premise of repaying wrong for wrong cannot be ethically justified by reason.

Anyways.... on the subject of Canadian copying levies, there is no actual proof of any wrongdoing on the part of creating these levies anyways, people who choose to respond to them by engaging in media piracy are either merely deluding themselves so that they won't feel bad about what they are doing (which can be rationally shown to be a flawed justification even if it wasn't a delusion) or else have already convinced themselves that the very premise of Copyright is flawed and wrong.

When the copyright act was created in Canada, personal use copying was explicitly considered exempt from infringing not because they actually wanted to give consumers rights, but rather primarily because of the expense and effort required to enforce it. Copying a copyrighted work was still tedious enough for people that did not have access to mass publication facilities that the overall effects of it on the value of owning a copyright on something were inconsequential anyways, so this allowance seemed reasonable. Technology ultimately caught up to this unexpected (at least by the creators of Copyright) loophole eventually, but rather than make illegal what was once an explicit exemption to copyright infringement, they instead choose to impose a levy.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

The court's decision was on a particular copying case (although the decision does have serious precedential ramifications). It was not on whether or not the copyright act should be reinterpreted. As a result, future cases are not unavoidably bound to follow suit (although it is doubtless that this case will be referred to heavily in such cases).

The copyright act says that copying copyrighted works without permission of the copyright holder is infringement.

It also says that copying for personal use is explicitly exempt from infringing.

Personal use seems to mean just that... personal use. If you give, sell, rent, trade, share, lend, or in any other way distribute something to anybody else, then it is no longer, by definition, still just "personal use".

Unless or until a detailed definition of exactly what entails personal use is added to the text of the copyright act, the judge ruled in a manner that contravenes it.

Re:Canadian levies

[Slithe]

No, the only thing that I hate about DRM is the crap laws that are upholding it (DMCA, etc.). If you want to try to 'secure' your work, then fine. However, if your scheme is broken, do not go crying all the way to court.

Re:Canadian levies

[ThePhilips]

+10

Same in Russia.

Re:Canadian levies

[ThePhilips]

complete dissolution of Copyright within Canada's borders.

You mean it is first country which acknowledged that making digital copies has no overhead and centuries old copyright regime is becoming obsolete?!

I am moving in!!

The problem with copyright is that in USA it is broadly interpreted. e.g. in Russia you need to buy a license if you going to make a profit. Most of non-for-profit actions (if not all) require no nod from copyright holder.

Or to put it bluntly, USA laws were screwed to make it appear that every unapproved copy is infringing. Many lands didn't fallen for it and still maintain that "every unapproved sold copy" is infringing. And that's logical: no profit was made - copyright holder cannot claim damages. But in USA logic is already screwed.

Re:Canadian levies

[bit01]

... but responding to it by doing the wrong thing ...

The RIAA's usual self-serving circular reasoning. Make something wrong by apriori definition and then try to argue that it's wrong.

Try to think outside their self-serving box.

---

Creating simple artificial scarcity with copyright and patents on things that can be copied billions of times at minimal cost is a fundamentally stupid economic idea.

Re:Canadian levies

[alexo]

Not exactly.

If I come to your house, browse your CD library, borrow one that I like and copy it for my own personal use - it will be legal. This is the accepted interpretation of the law.

The judge ruled that there is no fundamental difference between your CD rack and your music directory. The reasons were detailed in the ruling but basically, if you don't advertise it, don't profit from it, etc. and somebody comes along and copies it, it is OK.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

The actual difference, which the judge in this case failed to notice, is that the contents of one's music directory aren't actually the originals. Such files are, literally, _copies_ of the originals, and therefore legitimately subject to the restrictions imposed by Copyright. If I make copies of my CD's and put them on my CD rack, that's perfectly legal, and I can even let you browse my CD rack, but unless I have permission from the copyright holder to make non-personal use copies, I cannot allow you to borrow any of those copied CD's without infringing on copyright, because once I lend them to you, they would literally no longer be just for "personal use".

Even if one legitimately paid for a downloaded song and it was deposited in a shared files directory for others to browse, the song sitting on the hard drive is still not the original... the original would be the bitstream that came down the network pipe into one's computer, not the data file, which is just a copy, and therefore legitimately subject to the restrictions imposed by Copyright.

Unless the Copyright Act is altered to explicitly state that files on a computer storage medium do not constitute copies that are subject to the restrictions imposed by Copyright, the judge ruled in a way that contradicts it... he most definitely ruled in a way that contradicts its current meaning.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Ah, so you fall into the category of people who have already convinced themselves that copyright infringement is "victimless" and therefore is not unethical.

You're wrong... but it's pointless for me to go to any lengths to explain why because you've apparently already deluded yourself beyond any ability to accept it.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Don't hold your breath waiting for Canada's copyright laws to change. This ruling was on a single case, and although it certainly does have a great deal of precedential power, it has not resulted in a reconsideration of how the copyright act should be changed, which means that future cases could still take a different path.

Re:Canadian levies

[bit01]

I never said it was victimless. If you continue trying to misrepresent my position and trying to create an emotional and manipulative argument based on it, I'll have to assume you're an RIAA shill and therefore a paid fanatic.

Ever thought of getting real job and contributing to the community instead of being a parasite? You may be paid less money but you'll be paid more in the ways that matter.

---

New game: Spot the lying astroturfer on /.!

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Your exact words were "Make something wrong by apriori definition and then try to argue that it's wrong."

My apologies for making this assumption, but if you were not referring to copyright infringement itself, then what were you referring to?

Were you referring to file sharing itself? I would have thought that this would have been obvious, but sharing of copies of copyrighted works *IS* copyright infringement without permission of the copyright holder to make those copies because sharing something, regardless of who you share it with, literally and by definition precludes the very notion of "personal use".

If there's something else I'm missing here, enlighten me.

And by the way, my values are they way they are because I recognize that personal use copying as an exemption to copyright infringement is a priviledge, not a right, and I enjoy the use of such priviledge and do not wish for it to be taken away... even if it would be inconsequential to whether or not I physically _could_ still copy for my own personal use, I greatly enjoy the ability to do so without having to worry about breaking the law.

Still think I'm an RIAA or CRIA paid shill?

Re:Canadian levies

[alexo]

The actual difference, which the judge in this case failed to notice, is that the contents of one's music directory aren't actually the originals. Such files are, literally, _copies_ of the originals, and therefore legitimately subject to the restrictions imposed by Copyright. If I make copies of my CD's and put them on my CD rack, that's perfectly legal, and I can even let you browse my CD rack, but unless I have permission from the copyright holder to make non-personal use copies, I cannot allow you to borrow any of those copied CD's without infringing on copyright, because once I lend them to you, they would literally no longer be just for "personal use".

Please post a quote from the relevant statute that supports your view.

If you make a copy for your personal use, then I come along and make a copy of your copy for my personal use, it is still legal.

The important part is who makes the copy. You cannot make a copy for me (not personal use) but you can lend me your original or copy for listening (no copying involved) and then, I can copy it for my personal use. know that this is playing with semantics but this is how the law works.

Let me quote from the Copyright act: PART VIII - PRIVATE COPYING (emphasis mine):

Copying for Private Use

80. (1) Subject to subsection (2), the act of reproducing all or any substantial part of
(a) a musical work embodied in a sound recording,
(b) a performer's performance of a musical work embodied in a sound recording, or
(c) a sound recording in which a musical work, or a performer's performance of a musical work, is embodied
onto an audio recording medium for the private use of the person who makes the copy does not constitute an infringement of the copyright in the musical work, the performer's performance or the sound recording.

(2) Subsection (1) does not apply if the act described in that subsection is done for the purpose of doing any of the following in relation to any of the things referred to in paragraphs (1)(a) to (c):
(a) selling or renting out, or by way of trade exposing or offering for sale or rental;
(b) distributing, whether or not for the purpose of trade;
(c) communicating to the public by telecommunication; or
(d) performing, or causing to be performed, in public.

In other words, as long as somebody else makes the copy and you are not getting paid for it, it is legal.

The judge in that case ruled that, in that particular case, sharing the files was not "distribution".
Basically it was a distinction between "push" and "pull" models.

Quoting from the docket:

[26] No evidence was presented that the alleged infringers either distributed or authorized the reproduction of sound recordings. They merely placed personal copies into their shared directories which were accessible by other computer user via a P2P service.

[27] As far as authorization is concerned, the case of CCH Canada Ltd v. Law Society of Canada, 2004 SCC 13, established that setting up the facilities that allow copying does not amount to authorizing infringement. I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service. In either case the preconditions to copying and infringement are set up but the element of authorization is missing.

[28] The mere fact of placing a copy on a shared directory in a computer where that copy can be accessed via a P2P service does not amount to distribution. Before it constitutes distribution, there must be a positive act by the owner of the shared directory, such as sending out the copies or advertising that they are available for copying. No such evidence was presented by the plaint

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Copyright governs copies, nothing else. Copyright basically says that making a copy of a work protected by copyright is copyright infringement unless one has permission from the copyright holder. Period. Copyright infringement is against the law. Period.

Now... that said, copies made for personal use are exempt from copyright infringement. Period.

If I share a copyrighted file on my hard drive (assuming that had no permission to make copies from the copyright holder), I commit copyright infringement not because somebody _else_ makes a copy, but because I forwent the notion of using the copy that *I* made (on my hard drive) for my own personal and private use when I decided to share it. Period.

This is not about legal statutes or precedents, this about taking the text of the Copyright act as it is written and directly applying it. Unless or until the text of the act is rewritten to correspond to this one judge's interpretation of it, the meaning of Copyright is still unchanged. The case you refer to was, I repeat, just one case... it was not on the merits of the text of the Copyright act in general, and therefore it does not automatically follow that all copyrighted file sharing in Canada will forever be legal even without permission from the copyright holder. It has precedential power, this is also true, but the Copyright act was not changed by it, so don't try to infer that it has a broader scope than it really does.

Re:Canadian levies

[mark-t]

Here's a link to some relevant info, by the way.

Ummmm....no

[stubear]

The IFPI is the international version of the RIAA (Recroding Industry Association of America - music), not the MPAA (Motion Picture Associatin of America - film). If you're going to rant about something, at least be knowledgable about the subject matter first.

Re:Ummmm....no

[Anonymous Coward]

"If you're going to rant about something, at least be knowledgable about the subject matter first." ...because that happens so often.

Re:Ummmm....no

[speculatrix]

RIAA (Recroding Industry Association of America

a far more amusing typo would have been Recronying Industry Assoc, since its clear the RIAA is a bunch of thieving cronies!

"There is no excuse"

[Anonymous Coward]

"In each of the 17 countries involved in today's actions there are legal music services available to consumers. There is no excuse."

Pardon me, but in some countries it just might be legal to download for your own use. Like it used to be in Finland, before Tanja ex-Karpela now-Saarela, Jukka Liedes and the Gramex mafia sold out to the media biz.

And all those trained monkeys in the Parliament just keep on pushing the button as they are told by the party.

We might as well replace the "elected representatives" with remote-controlled robots. I bet they would be cheaper, too.

Yes, nowadays you can buy and download legally, IF the record label or rights holder in question has authorized your country to be the one who can download that specific track you want.

Re:"There is no excuse"

[giafly]

"In each of the 17 countries involved in today's actions there are legal music services available to consumers. There is no excuse."

He's obviously a very ignorant man who doesn't read Slashdot. Readers have submitted literally thousands of excuses.

Re:"There is no excuse"

[Pofy]

>Pardon me, but in some countries it just might be legal to download for your own use.

Pardon me, but the article says they targeted uploaders, not downloaders. That is, people that is sharing the music for others. Wether it is legal or not to download is completely irellevant.

Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[Admin_Jason]

I didn't know there was a converter kit for migrating vinyl tracks off an LP to your PC. That must plug into my ISA slot on the 386sx. Yes, the hoardes of people who are digitizing vinyl tracks and then getting scads of people downloading them represent an imminent threat to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. And I bet you can almost hear the music over the static!

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[El Torico]

I didn't know there was a converter kit for migrating vinyl tracks off an LP to your PC.

Actually, there is; here's one - http://www.ion-audio.com/ittusb.php. There are probably more.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[paganizer]

Actually, you can get a high-end turntable these days with a USB port. I just use line-out to my nforce2 audio in, and sample at about double CD quality; that ALMOST gets all the sound that is on vinyl that a CD misses.
As for P2P, I can't use it anymore. My ISP politely asked me to stop, as it was really killing their ability to service their other customers.
I'm serious; they didn't threaten to throttle me, kick me off, or sue me, they very politely requested that I cut back as much as possible.
Which sucks, in a way. if they were assholes, i would have just circumvented whatever they tried. Now I have to play nice.
Grrr.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[Anonymous Coward]

Um actually a lot of vinyl albums are released in P2P. hundreds a day.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[Admin_Jason]

OMG people - it was sarcasm, but apparantly either I didn't correctly close my tags, or html didn't render them correctly...

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[crabpeople]

Did you try limiting your upload with something like netlimiter?

Usually ISP's just care about uploads, not downloads.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[hypoxide]

Why cut back? What's the worst they'll do? Cut your service? And lose a valuable customer? Oh, well. Maybe you'll have to find a new ISP.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[TheRaven64]

He's not a valuable customer. The valuable customers are ones who use a very small amount of bandwidth, so the ISP doesn't have to pay for external (or, worse, international) bandwidth. Customers who use more than the bandwidth that an ISP's under-provisioning allocates are expensive, and are better palmed off on a competitor.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[gsmraxe]

I use bittorrent...So my ISP doesn't start to bitch at me, I only run it at night. Start it before I go to bed and stop it when I get up. No one has complained, and I download gigs of music every night.

Re:Vinyl to mp3 converter?

[paganizer]

I like them. and they were polite. it seems wrong to punish them for treating me as I would treat them in the same situation.

Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

TBH, I haven't purchased a CD since about 1998. But I have lots of new music... *runs and hides* Why haven't I purchased a CD you ask? Because I can think of many many many more things to spend my hard-earned $20 on that will bring me much more joy than a CD. And now, with the advent of broadband, it now takes LESS TIME to download a CD than to drive to the store and get it. So why bother? Legality? Don't make me laugh.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

Morality, perhaps? Do you just want your favourite artists to live on pity handouts or something? You'll download their work, which they've put blood, sweat and tears into, but maybe if you deign to give them payment, they can eat this week. And when does that happen?

Musicians aren't your personal entertainment monkeys, you know.

Re:Why Bother?

[Opportunist]

Musicians aren't your personal entertainment monkeys, you know.

Indeed. They're the money monkeys for the record industry. How many cents of the CD you buy do you think reach the artist, hmm?

Re:Why Bother?

[punkr0x]

The whole industry needs to wake up. If they can't find a way to make a profit without suing their customers, they're in the wrong business. Plenty of people have proved you can be pro-filesharing and still make enough sales to own a couple mansions.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"How many cents of the CD you buy do you think reach the artist, hmm?"

Another fucking idiot.
I get 50% of the profit on every CD I've ever made.
The biggest mark up is by the record shops. Why not whine about them instead?

Bands CANNOT handle all the distribution, on line sales, internet presence, marketing etc etc themselves.

If you try to then you spend no time performing or making music, you spend all you time fixing web forums and on the phone to people.
As soon as a band gets people to help them out..... well waddya know! they have to pay them!, and it's the same as being on a label. WHAT DO YOU THINK RECORD LABELS DO????

fucking idiots.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Troll.

I could explain the size of royalties, recording contracts, and so on, but it would just be playing piano to a cow.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

I already know about royalties and recording contracts, and clearly far more than you do.

1) Royalties have to go to everyone involved in making and selling an album, which (if the artist wishes to delegate) may not be just the artist and his or her band.
2) Recording contracts are voluntary. Artists join them mainly in order to delegate, so the business types do business and the musicy types (the artist) can do music.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

I swapped hard drives with a colleague, and now have far more mp3's than I need. one 80GB disk in a car at 70mph represents a lot of bandwidth!

About one third of my mp3 collection is legit, ripped off CDs. I would happily make an honesty payment directly to the original artists and performers for the money they would have earned had I bought the CDs, but it would only be 10's of cents if that - I will NOT pay to line the pockets of the RIAA and their lawyers.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

You have a very fucked up definition of "customers". If people don't buy CDs, and instead download them, they're hardly "customers", are they?

They do have a way of making profit; it's called "selling copies of songs". They did it admirably until people worked out how to get songs for free. Just because it's possible to get songs for free, at the complete cost of those who financed and facilitated their production, does not mean that is something the record industry should "adjust" to. Frankly, I think a lot of the hostility towards the RIAA is more people afraid of them pissing on their free music parade.

Re:Why Bother?

[Hijacked Public]

I'm pretty sure that is the whole of it, instead of just a lot.

Re:Why Bother?

[betterunixthanunix]

I don't know if this is the most incredibly uninformed post I have ever read, or if the author was on mescaline while he wrote it. Here's the thing: downloading music has 0 impact on CD sales. The overwhelming majority of downloaders wouldn't have actually purchased the CD anyway, and the people who bought CDs before the advent of P2P networks...are still buying them. And CD sales don't make artists rich -- concerts make artists rich, and you cannot download the experience of seeing a band live. Driven by greed and technophobia, the RIAA has tried to construe this as an attack on their business, by claiming that they are losing money when they are posting record profits, and that it is possible to lose something they never had to begin with.

Re:Why Bother?

[w128jad]

I'll quote Eben Moglen of FSF fame:
"If I can provide to everyone all goods of intellectual value or beauty, for the same price that I can provide the first copy of those works to anyone, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could feed everyone on earth at the cost of baking one loaf and pressing a button, what would be the moral case for charging more for bread than some people could afford to pay?"

I agree wholeheartedly. The record industry is struggling to keep alive a system that is artificial and long past due to be replaced. We as humans need to decide for ourselves how we will partake of human culture. The record industry will either adapt or die. Vilifying the masses of poor and unprivileged as "pirate" (someone who robs at sea or plunders the land from the sea without having a commission from any sovereign nation; murderers and rapists) for the "crime" of participating in human culture without paying to current powers is merely propaganda.

The inherent inequity in the current system which awards very few at the expense of many, and excludes artificially the majority of the human race from its own culture is wrong, and must be fought by any means. I not only take the position that is is not immoral to file share, but that it is our duty to file share. Just as it was our fore-father's duty to fight the tyranny of distant royalty which usurped our human liberties, it is our duty to stand opposed to the immoral laws of our nation that remove our liberties to share with our fellow man.

The fact that there are big winners with our currently system is overshadowed by the fact that there are a vast majority of losers.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Gee, I didn't know Britney and others are in so much of a jam that their daily meal is in jeopardy. I'll go right down and buy some hit CD's, I mean the artists must eat like the rest of us, right?

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

what do you think record labels do????

Sue grannies and dead people?

(and yes, I had to change from all caps because of the lame filter...)

Re:Why Bother?

[Admin_Jason]

The author (me) was writing tongue in cheek - but as I indicated upthread a ways, apparently either I didn't code my sarcasm tags correctly or the browser didn't render them...is it or is it [sarcasm][/sarcasm]?

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

This, my friend, is bullshit.

Do you think that producers work for free? Do you think CD duplication plants duplicate CDs for free? Do you seriously think that it's the "poor and underprivileged" who download, considering that one of the requirements for downloading music is a broadband connection and PC, and that people who aren't poor and underprivileged are very likely to download as well? Do you really think you're making any kind of useful point, playing the pirate-semantics game, like always happens when someone uses the dreaded P-word, which has been in common use for centuries?

You sir, are extremely deluded. If you download, or indeed buy and listen to, music, you are not participating in human culture, you are partaking of it. It is the artists who are participating in it, and it is they, those who ask for money in return for their work, who get screwed over the most when people gleefully take their work for free. Downloading devalues culture, if anything, and almost certainly depersonifies music. It presents music as nothing more than a stream of 0s and 1s that can be deleted or created at will and on demand, rather than a work of art which someone created using their own time, skill and effort.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

Britney might be shit and a millionaire, but she still deserves to be paid for her work, just like everybody else. And let's face it, people on Slashdot are hardly likely to be downloading Britney.

Re:Why Bother?

[Hijacked Public]

And what does freely copying an artist's music do for the artist?

Also would you guess at whether a service like iTunes would exist if the original Napster had not been pulled down by the entertainment industry?

Re:Why Bother?

[terrahertz]

...and we all know how fair and unexploitative recording contracts have proven to be over the history of their existence.

I think Ian MacKaye said it best: "When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance."

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

As has been said elsewhere, the artist, RIAA and lawyers are not the only people who benefit from CD sales. Producers, session musicians, recording technicians etc...they all need to be paid too. And if downloading is more ethical than buying CDs because artists get paid so little, why not pay more than 10 cents? Or is that all an album/song is worth to you?

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

If contracts are exploitative and unfair, that is the artist's fault for accepting such shitty terms.

Re:Why Bother?

[Cr33pybusguy]

Went out yesterday and bought and a new CD. The first in years. Racontuers (sp?) I'm wishing i hadn't. Why? The same old shit as usual. Two good songs out of ten. On a fucking 40 minute cd. Here's the deal if you record producers make a CD that I can listen to all the way through (Weezer's Make Believe case in point). Maybe i would buy the damn disc. But as it sits right now this isn't the case. That or filling the whole CD would be nice. You bastards have been doing that for years. WTF 20 minutes of silence on one side of a tape???? Leaves you feeling gyped. I paid good fucking money for it and I expect to be repaid in kind. I appreciate the Stadium Arcadium having a substantial amount of tunes on it to increase my listening pleasure. I might even buy it to suppost them even though i've dl'd it already. I'd like for you to sue bittorent good luck with that.

Re:Why Bother?

[betterunixthanunix]

What did FM radio do for artists? The RIAA tried to stop FM radios from being produced, with the claim that the sound quality was too good and people would stop buying records...

Re:Why Bother?

[terrahertz]

Yeah, ok trollerific trolly-troll. Keep on trollin'. If you don't know what I'm getting at, perhaps you could find a hard object to hit yourself in the head with until you comprehend the definition of the word "exploitative."

Re:Why Bother?

[punkr0x]

Taking people to court is not a good business model. They should find a way to make people want to buy the music through them, instead of downloading it. There are already plenty of incentives. CD-quality. Artwork. Extras packaged with the cd. Live music. The RIAA would rather indiscriminately sue people (people who may or may not have illegally downloaded their content, they don't really care). They cut corners in every case, attempting to force a big cash settlement rather than go through the proper channels. These bloodsucking lawyers only represent the greediest of artists: show me one independant musician who feels as if they deserve $1,000+ for every copy of their song they can find on a 13 year old kid's hard drive. If you manage to find one, I'll show you a thousand who WISH they could get their song spread freely on the internet.

Downloaders are customers. They are customers who love the product so much, they want to get their hands on as much of it as they can. They want rarities and live performances and content you can't buy. They want the cd before it is available in stores. And most frequent downloaders probably have larger-than-average collections of legitimately purchased music as well. People don't like the RIAA because they want to piss all over everything, and they want us to pay them to do it.

Re:Why Bother?

[Kjella]

Getting a little melodramatic aren't we? I've heard this so many times now, and I just feel this needs to be said: The only musicians starving are those who choose to be musicians regardless of whether they're starving or not. We don't see starving whip and buggy producers asking for handouts, those people have found other work. In the big picture we adjust supply to match actual demand, not some theoretical construct of what the demand could have been. People might have put blood, sweat and tears into making an überleet character in WoW, but that doesn't mean it has a natural right to be a viable source of income. Maybe those musicians have to become taxi drivers or burger flippers (or go on tour!) rather than doing what they want all the time, but that is how it is for most people. Most of them would have to do that regardless of piracy, very few can make a living on their hobby. Yes, it's quite unfair for the small group who should have been able to make a living, but where piracy is the dealbreaker but that hardly makes them anything like the poor people we see really starving in third world countries.

I'm not concerned that there's a burger flipper out there who wanted to be a musician any more than someone what wanted to be a pro football player. I'm concerned that society might miss the next Elvis because he's flipping burgers instead. Likewise I'm not concerned about whether people are doing programming or plumbing, but rather what kinds of great new software products we as a society might have missed. People won't put up with crap income and career potential, but they will adapt. Society on the other hand would stagnate. But if you're telling me that some artist's kids go hungry tonight because of piracy, I'd tell him to get a salaried job and suck it up like the rest of us. It might not be the life that he wants, but it's not that hard to make *a* living. It's quite simnply realpolitik - how the world is and not how it should be.

Re:Why Bother?

[w128jad]

And you sir, are short sighted. The ethereal presentation of music as you describe (stream of 0s and 1s that can be deleted or created at will and on demand) is actually more traditional and ancient than its current digital manifestation, my insulting friend. Throughout all human history, with the exception of the dawn of the industrial revolution and its novel method of encapsulating sensory (auditory in this case) information to physical media (a short period indeed relative to human history), the temporal "existence" of music was fleeting. One had to be present to hear it, whether it be around a campfire, in a pub, a church, or in a concert hall. In that way, it was accessible to all walks of life, both as "partaker" and "participant", and wasn't artificially presented as being anyone's personal property. It was sound and inherently free.

As to whether or not I'm deluded or not, I think it is fair to say you are not in the position to judge, particularly based on such a short (and one way) discourse. I will say I disagree with you. Listening to music is an engaging activity for myself, and others. You are partaking yes, but *also* participating. You are participating by experiencing our world and incorporating those experiences into your being and spirit, and sharing those experiences with those around us. That is a fundamental part and reason for liberty.

Do I believe artists should be able to make a living from their craft? Certainly, I do. Do I think that should be accomplished by creating a legal toll-booth that all have to pass to experience culture? Hell fucking no.

I think there are other means of rewarding artists. I also think that this is a demonstratable fact. I need not mention how many countless people have pointing out that they have both downloaded to sample music before purchase, and they have paid to attend concerts of their favorite artists, as well as to download and experience music which they otherwise would not have given the time of day, let alone "pay" for. This gives not only popular artists a fair chance of compensation for their work, but also exposes us to artists who are not getting marketing exposier from the recording industry juggernauts.

As for your point on being "poor and underprivileged" is invalidated by the ownership of a personal computer and access to broadband internet access, are you kidding? Certainly any American, even a hobo on the street could be demonstrated to be wealthy when compared to the poorest of the world. The same could be said for any individual of any western nation. But the disparity between any common American that is file sharing, and the wealthiest pop star or record industry executive makes that relativity irrelevant. The power, political influence, and access to elements of human culture of those powerful individuals and organizations is artificial.

If we have the technical means for all the world to experience human culture at zero marginal cost, I think it is immoral to withhold it. To suggest that the world would then let its most cherished and famous artist starve as reward for their work is deluded as well, as you say. No famous artist is, or ever will be excluded from wealth and privelege, regardless of the particular system we use to compensate them. For me, at least, the current one is outdated and immoral given our technical capabilities.

I say we let it burn and see what arises from its ashes.

Re:Why Bother?

[element-o.p.]

I hate DRM as much as anyone else on /. -- the Sony rootkit fiasco is a great example why DRM is a (tm) BAD IDEA -- but, I think you are missing the point.

Whether or not P2P affects profits, whether or not file sharing takes money from the people who created the content or invested in making the content available, the people who create a given work of art have the sole right to determine how, when, where and for how much $$$ the content will be distributed. Ripping a CD, DVD or whatever to a digital format and offering it for upload to others in violation of the licensing is not your prerogative. If you don't like the licensing agreement, if you think it is overpriced, if you think the corporations are greedy, slimy weasels, then DON'T BUY the product. But you don't have the right to file-share it, unless the producer of the content grants you the right.

Having said that, as an amateur musician, I would prefer that my content *was* shared--as was posted earlier in this thread, most of the money that goes to artists and the corporations that fund them doesn't come from record sales; it comes from concerts and merchandise sales. Furthermore, having someone with a lot of "friends" post my music or videos (okay, I haven't made any videos, but if I had...) on YouTube would probably be better advertising than anything I could ever pay for, anyway.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Went out yesterday and bought and a new CD. The first in years. Racontuers (sp?) I'm wishing i hadn't. Why? The same old shit as usual. Two good songs out of ten. On a fucking 40 minute cd. Here's the deal if you record producers make a CD that I can listen to all the way through (Weezer's Make Believe case in point). Maybe i would buy the damn disc. But as it sits right now this isn't the case."

You want to know why?
OK, here's the big secret.
A bands first album takes many years to write. They tour, sweat, live in hovels unknown beating out the inspiration and developing on tunes they started way back when they first picked up a guitar.

Then, a year later they are expected to put out another album.
Problem is that they have spent that year touring, promoting the first one and taking drugs.
So they end up writing it all in the studio and over paid fuckwits piece together their half baked ideas in pro tools and you end up with an uninspired limp lump of shit.

You expect Jack White to come up with a NEW lifetimes worth of experience and writing to condense into a new album?
Of course he fucking can't. He used it all up on the first White Stripes album, and then RIPPED HIMSELF OFF to make the second. So you end up with derivative tunes, oh but with great production. The Stone Roses fell into the same trap. Most artists got 3-4 real classic songs in them and rest is drivel.

"WTF 20 minutes of silence on one side of a tape???? "

You think we should predict which fucking medium you will buy it on and write music to fill that?
What about DVD? You could fit an a bands entire lifetimes work on that at 24/96K and still have space to spare.

Good music takes time. Albums are not a big deal anymore for the punters or the industry so bands just knock them out as fast as they can. Yes it's crap but that's where the attitude of throw away culture gets you.

Re:Why Bother?

[betterunixthanunix]

Which is why I disagree with the idea of intellectual property, not nearly as much with music as with medicine, but even so -- why should the person who created the music have the right to decide that other people don't have the right to listen to it? Every argument I've heard has centered around the idea that, without legal protection from copying, nobody would have the incentive to create intellectual property because they couldn't (in theory) profit off it because once one copy was sold, everyone else would just make their own copies from it. Yet the statistics show that this is not the case (see above, or just look for actual studies), so those arguments don't really hold water. So I repeat: why should a musician decide that only some people can listen to his works, and others cannot?

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

Taking people to court is not a good business model. They should find a way to make people want to buy the music through them, instead of downloading it.

Taking people to court isn't their fucking business model. I'm utterly sick of reading that it is. Their business model is selling copies of recorded works. Unfortunately, P2P has fucked that up.

If you love the "product" (music) so much, you'd be willing pay for it. Most downloaders don't, they use LimeWire and that is the end of it. The five people on Slashdot who will inevitably pop up and say they buy everything they download are not representative of the millions of people who download.

And no, downloaders are NOT customers. They are consumers, in the worst pejorative use of the term. Shoplifters are not customers (yeah, I know, not stealing, yadayada), no reasonable person would treat them as such.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

Yes. Troll. OK.

Maybe you could find a similarly hard object until you realise the meanings of "voluntary" and "contract".

Re:Why Bother?

[Hijacked Public]

Are you under the assumption that people who share music get for themselves Broadcast licenses for each song they share, or contact BMI or ASCAP or SESAC to pay royalties?

Re:Why Bother?

[FLEB]

I see Copyright more as a device to level the playing field. A worker could put hours and experience into creating a physical work, and they would tend to profit, because it would take the same amount of time and effort-- if not more-- for someone to create a "copy". Intellectual works to not have that disincentive, so an artificial system was made, because society realized that content creators deserved as much right to profit or control the output of their labor as someone who spent time on a physical task.

A musician should get to decide, because the musician is the one who put time and energy into creating something, even if it is something that has the unfortunate property of being more easily replicable than producible. Potential profit statistics show that perhaps content creators could make a living without copyrights, but I would argue that copyright goes deeper than profit possibility-- although that's what most use it for-- it's a matter of the right to own what you have produced, to set your own value in the world, and to make good or bad decisions on your own, not at the whim of people who possess little more than the ability than to mindlessly replicate the minor and mostly-irrelevant physical embodiment of the time and work you spent.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does the same apply to software piracy?
I mean, all those programmers can go get other jobs, can't they?
Yes, it's quite unfair for the small group who should have been able to make a living, but where piracy is the dealbreaker but that hardly makes them anything like the poor people we see really starving in third world countries.

"In the big picture we adjust supply to match actual demand, not some theoretical construct of what the demand could have been."

The problem is that the demand for music is there, otherwise it would not be pirated. If people make no money creating it then we cannot adjust the supply to meet that demand.

Re:Why Bother?

[glsunder]

There's a LOT of albums out there that I wouldn't buy. They're simply not worth the price of a decent meal to me (or even a crappy one). But, if someone offered them to me for free, I'd take it. I might listen to it once. Most CDs fit in this category.

Another issue is who wants to spend $15 to figure out if you like a band? Let's lay out the options:

Radio -- what if the band isn't mainstream enough to be played on clear channel?
Borrow -- Hmm, what if you don't know anyone who has the cd?
Band's website -- some bands have mp3s up, of course, they'll be cherry picked.
MTV -- er, right. See radio.
Internet radio -- more targetted and wider variety than radio.
??? -- profit.

The best options I see there are the band's website and internet radio. Guess what? Both involve the net. Perhaps it's time to rethink the business model. We're getting to where most people would be happy without a physical copy. This would dramatically drop the costs to the recording companies. And don't give me that crap about the cost of studio time. It should be getting cheaper, not more expensive.

The problem I see is the music industry wants to keep the profits from the reduced cost that the internet can bring. Customers are giving them the finger, and going elsewhere -- p2p -- to get the product. Cut the cost of quality albums to $2 to $5 and you'll see piracy drop and sales will go up dramatically.

Re:Why Bother?

[terrahertz]

Past court decisions the world over have unequivocally demonstrated that certain contracts are unenforceable, and have been rendered void by the courts. Among the reasons that certain contracts have been nullified is....drum roll please....because they have been found to be illegally exploitative of one or more parties.

Before you say "oh, but an illegal contract isn't a contract at all, is it" you must acknowledge that a contract can only be deemed illegal after an expensive, time-consuming, laborious legal process, which oftentimes isn't feasible.

So, in light of that, do I understand you right? You believe that no matter the legality of a given contract, whatever ill effects befall a party to that contract are solely the responsibility of that same party? Please, continue to play along. You'll get a nice door prize when we're all finished.

Re:Why Bother?

[element-o.p.]

Thank you. You answered the question asked in the parent post better than I could have.

Re:Why Bother?

[punkr0x]

Taking people to court isn't their fucking business model. I'm utterly sick of reading that it is. Their business model is selling copies of recorded works. Unfortunately, P2P has fucked that up.

Oh, so normally they would be promoting cds? I hear a lot more about them suing people. I don't see any positive promotion going on. I mean, I'm their target audience, you'd think if they were promoting their artists, I'd have heard about it.

If you love the "product" (music) so much, you'd be willing pay for it. Most downloaders don't, they use LimeWire and that is the end of it.

What are you basing this on? I do download stuff, I also buy stuff. We can sit here and make up numbers all day, but I buy new cds almost weekly. I don't think my download habits are hurting the RIAA very much.

What's unreasonable is the value the RIAA is placing on their plastic discs. They started charging $20 for an album, their sales inevitably declined, and coincidentally, they found something else to blame it on. Now they're bullying people into ridiculous settlements with threats of expensive court cases, because they know the average consumer can't afford a law team equal to their corporately sponsored one. How many cases have they actually taken to court? What's their track record when they do find someone willing to take it all the way, the RIGHT way, instead of settling with them? I think, in a case where the CREATORS and rightful owners of the art can't even agree on whether filesharing is good or bad for them, it's absolutely ludicrous to declare it shoplifting, illegal and immoral.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hot bejeebus! How many trolling entries did you leave? You're coming across as bad as a paid plant.

You're full of misguided crap.

Copyright should be used to stop people making profit (non-royalty-paying merchants) from exploiting producers for free. Attacking sharing doesn't do this - it's just a RIAA scare tactic.

RIAA makes a fuss. RIAA spits out misinfo and half arguments. They're a capitalist group of corps and that was corps do.

You're an ass.

RIAA's setup mucks up the profit distribution - a few people make much money.

Quoting RIAA is dumb. Lots of people deserve to be paid. There must be third world workers getting paid zip-squat to make CDs. Or lets talk about environment damage costs as part of the expense and cloud the issues.

If these people weren't being paid now, they'd be doing something else. If they aren't getting paid later, they will be doing something else. The world doesn't turn on CDs.

CD's really are overpriced. I'd say that kills some sales but good.

You're still an ass.

Artists can make money from concerts. And CDs are still in the big profit range too, last I checked.

Artists can still sell CDs - people will still buy CDs if they want a physical copy, and because its more convenient. I know I still do.

Did I mention you're an ass?

Re:Why Bother?

[Jesselnz]

I own about 20% of my music collection, and in my opinion that's fair. Download tons of albums, and buy the ones you like the best.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"If I can provide to everyone all goods of intellectual value or beauty, for the same price that I can provide the first copy of those works to anyone, why is it ever moral to exclude anyone from anything? If you could feed everyone on earth at the cost of baking one loaf and pressing a button, what would be the moral case for charging more for bread than some people could afford to pay?" What a great quote. It cuts to the heart of everything that is wrong with copyright laws. It is the copyright laws that are morally wrong, not the file sharers. What would Jesus the fish sharer do?

Re:Why Bother?

[Kjella]

Does the same apply to software piracy?

Yes, that's what I meant when I said "programmer or plumber". If I was starving on a programmer's salary, I'd find another career. So would most others, and soon there'd only be those who are either making good money anyway or really do want to program, just like musicians do want to play. Since far fewer people are into IT for the love of it, I imagine the market would have an even easier time adjusting. I'd be far more concerned about low-cost countires where your poor salary is a good salary anyway.

The problem is that the demand for music is there, otherwise it would not be pirated. If people make no money creating it then we cannot adjust the supply to meet that demand.

Supply is already matched to what people are willing to pay, and if people can't make any money off it supply will be zero. It's like the $5 Ferrari market, it doesn't exist. That still doesn't mean we have starving $5 Ferrari workers, because they don't exist. A non-existant market is a problem for economists and investors.

Re:Why Bother?

[miskatonic alumnus]

I'm pretty sure that you are wrong. I don't download/share/upload music --- I pay for it. So, I tend to get miffed when these assholes try to keep me from making backups or cd mixes of music that I BOUGHT AND PAID FOR by whining to Congress to pass draconian legislation like the DMCA, print DRM infected discs, try to install rootkits on my computer, or any of the other restrictive bullshit they pull that only affects their PAYING CUSTOMERS, and which pirates easily bypass ANYWAY. FUCK THEM!!!

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you going to do when the whole fucking well goes dry 'no more money from customers'? The problem is music is not meant to be sold, but like information it wants to be free. IThen again if you are to fucktarded to realize it, hopefully you will lose all your fucking customers.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

They do have a way of making profit; it's called "selling copies of songs".

Why do you feel you have a moral right to charge multiple times for a single piece of work ?

They did it admirably until people worked out how to get songs for free.

Yeah. That would have been back when the first two sticks were banged together. It's called "listening".

Just because it's possible to get songs for free, at the complete cost of those who financed and facilitated their production, does not mean that is something the record industry should "adjust" to. Frankly, I think a lot of the hostility towards the RIAA is more people afraid of them pissing on their free music parade.

In the RIAA's ideal world, people would be automatically charged a fee every time they hummed a few bars of music to themselves.

Copyright is _ludicrously_ skewed in favour of content producers (more accurately, content distributors) and against content consumers. File sharing is a perfectly understandable and reasonable reaction to that injustice.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

And what does freely copying an artist's music do for the artist?

Increases their popularity.

Also would you guess at whether a service like iTunes would exist if the original Napster had not been pulled down by the entertainment industry?

Of course. No matter what FUD copyright whores like to spew, people *will* choose the legal option if it is quicker, easier and delivers better service than the illegal version.

If you can sell bottled water, you can sell anything. To suggest that a product as desirable as entertainment couldn't be sold, is ridiculous on its face.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

A musician should get to decide, because the musician is the one who put time and energy into creating something, even if it is something that has the unfortunate property of being more easily replicable than producible.

Note that as soon as "entertainment" moves from a model of mass duplicated copies to live performance, this argument becomes moot.

People who (rationally and reasonably) oppose the copyright regime do so because they do not believe someone being able to exploit a single piece of work multiple times with, essentially, no additional effort on their part is fair.

Copyright exists solely to artificially impose scarcity on something that inherently has infinite supply. As soon as the "artist" is creating a "product" that *doesn't* have that inherently unlimited supply, the whole argument for copyright pretty much evaporates.

Re:Why Bother?

[Anonymous Coward]

"What are you going to do when the whole fucking well goes dry 'no more money from customers'? "

How many more fucking idiots can this site hold?

What do you mean 'when the well goes dry'? No more music for films, no more charts, no more MTV, no more television soundtracks, no more advertising?

As long as people want high quality music, they will pay for it. As long as it costs money to produce and distribute high quality music, that cost will be passed on to the customer.

I don't see this changing any time soon.

Re:Why Bother?

[Hijacked Public]

I don't think it increases anyone's popularity because the people who download the songs already want them. Probably because they saw the CD in store or saw an ad somewhere, both of which were put there by the record company on behalf and at the request of the artist, who chose to ally with the label to distribute his music rather than take part in your imagined economy where all music is distributed freely in the hopes that someone buys a t-shirt or paypals whatever amount they see fit to paypal.

It is telling that you require a metaphor to understand this situation and I do not, because I am not an imbecile.

Re:Why Bother?

[jb.hl.com]

I'm not even going to dignify that post with a response. It's just a straw man with a few other logical fallacies bundled with it.

By the way, in any corporation's ideal world, you would be charged a fee if you even looked at their product. That is the way corporations are. The RIAA would never sink so low, simply because the public backlash would kill them. And it seems the only reason you're against copyright law is because it allows people to charge money for music.

Re:Why Bother?

[FLEB]

You do bring up a good point, although I think you're overlooking what actually goes into "cover song" licensing. The royalty is not paid to any performer of the work (specifically), but to the writer of the song. Writers, who can be completely separate from the original or best-known performers (and stay in obscurity in the shadow of a well-known performance), would end up with their trade greatly devalued if they could not receive their due. At least with organizations like ASCAP and BMI, and statuatory licensing rates, performers can immediately know where they stand, without having to track down the original author, if they wish to perform a work.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

I'm not even going to dignify that post with a response.

Too late, so you may as well make your time worth it and answer the question (which no-one riding the copyright gravy train ever seems to want to do, unsurprisingly).

By the way, in any corporation's ideal world, you would be charged a fee if you even looked at their product.

Undoubtedly. But there's no rationale for supporting that kind of model with businesses providing physical products or services, while there most certainly *is* for ones who rely on copyright (and the businesses relying on copyright are well on the way to making it a reality).

The RIAA would never sink so low, simply because the public backlash would kill them.

Right. Just like the public backlash against their blatant and gross abuses of copyright thus far has "killed them".

And it seems the only reason you're against copyright law is because it allows people to charge money for music.

Not at all. I'm against copyright because it's a broken model trying to artificially limit the supply of something with an inherently infinite supply to make it behave like physical property. I am all for people being charged for music, just not the restrictions on what they can do with that music afterwards.

The problem with the copyright business is they want their "product" to have the benefits of physical goods, but none of the drawbacks.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

I don't think it increases anyone's popularity because the people who download the songs already want them.

Are you seriously suggesting that every artist has an equal level of popularity ? That the upcoming band only a handful of people know the name of, with a single song on the airwaves for maybe a day or two, has the same following as bands like U2 ?

Probably because they saw the CD in store or saw an ad somewhere, [...]

Or maybe they just heard it. I can't say I've ever met anyone that's bought music based solely on what the CD looked like in the store.

[...] both of which were put there by the record company on behalf and at the request of the artist, who chose to ally with the label to distribute his music rather than take part in your imagined economy where all music is distributed freely in the hopes that someone buys a t-shirt or paypals whatever amount they see fit to paypal.

Funny, I haven't seen anyone with serious objections to copyright suggesting any such "economy". It's a pretty common strawman to pummel, though, so your response isn't unexpected.

It is telling that you require a metaphor to understand this situation and I do not, because I am not an imbecile.

I don't need any metaphor to "understand the situation", I merely gave an example of how something "free" can be "sold" because of little more than good marketing. Given your apparent mental capacities, I'm amazed the fact that people actual pay for bottled water doesn't make your head turn inside out.

(I would have thought that was obvious to anyone capable of directing a web browser towards Slashdot, but you've managed to undercut my expectations of intelligence by a good order of magnitude or two.)

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

You do bring up a good point, although I think you're overlooking what actually goes into "cover song" licensing. The royalty is not paid to any performer of the work (specifically), but to the writer of the song. Writers, who can be completely separate from the original or best-known performers (and stay in obscurity in the shadow of a well-known performance), would end up with their trade greatly devalued if they could not receive their due. At least with organizations like ASCAP and BMI, and statuatory licensing rates, performers can immediately know where they stand, without having to track down the original author, if they wish to perform a work.

I'm sure buggy whip sellers everywhere would feel their pain.

(I realise that sounds harsh, but I'm not trying to be callous - it's just a fact that over time, changes in society make some jobs irrelevant and/or significantly less valuable on average (while new jobs are created)).

Re:Why Bother?

[FLEB]

Buggy whips are obsolete. Songs, however, are still being written by songwriters.

Re:Why Bother?

[LupusCanis]

... to be honest, I think that this guy here is just lying.

I have a musician who was a chart-topper a few years ago in my family - incredibly well selling band it was, too. Despite this, he came out significantly in debt, and he is no big spender at all. Recently he's become a song-writer, and has written music which has been moderately succesful, now he has a decent income.

I find it hard to believe that any artist anywhere makes 50% of the profit from the music he or she makes - every source I've heard, including from the horse's mouth, claims a figure not even approaching that one. Either you've got immensly lucky with which label accepted you, or you're simply making stuff up.

Re:Why Bother?

[drsmithy]

Songs, however, are still being written by songwriters.

Fortunately, I'm not saying songs - or even songwriters - are obselete.

Re:Why Bother?

[FLEB]

Then I'm afraid I don't follow you.

Whales

[Himring]

In other news, whale songs are being investigated in the ocean. The ocean, itself -- being a great conductor of sound waves, could be the largest p2p network on earth, and if lawyers can piece together three consecutive notes of any copyrighted materials, whales could be served with papers ... or harpoons....

Re:Whales

[Opportunist]

Not too loud, I'm quite sure that's a way to make Norway and Japan side with the music industry.

Re:Whales

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, the same RIAA pirate a lot of whale songs, themselves. Shamelessly stealing them by recording whales' broadcasts, and then re-selling as their own products:

http://www.dolphinwave.org/Audio/cd1.html

Re:Whales

[aZoRaCiNt]

rolling on the ground laughing my ass off. after all this serious talk it's nice to c there is humor alive.

And I continue not to buy music

[Phoenix666]

Let's pass that along to our kids, too. Instead of paying record labels, patronize podsafe music or amateur bands (most of whom sound better than record label pap).

Or make your own music. That's the best of all.

Since the RIAA began their suicidal jihad, I taught myself to play the guitar. I'm no virtuoso or even very good by any objective measure, but there's about 100 times the satisfaction and enjoyment in playing the 10 tunes I know than in just listening to any song I've ever heard.

So, in a way, thank you RIAA for showing me that doing my own thing is far more amazing than giving you money for the garbage you laughingly, mockingly call 'art.'

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Anonymous Coward]

I hope you paid for the rights to play those songs. Illegal/Stolen/Liberated Tabs support terrorism you know.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Anonymous Coward]

"Let's pass that along to our kids, too. Instead of paying record labels, patronize podsafe music or amateur bands (most of whom sound better than record label pap)."

You fucking idiot. You don't know what a record label is.
It might just be a couple of people from a band and a cd burner, pressing their own and their mate's music.

The biggest damage the RIAA has done is to make people like you think every record label is evil and deserves to be ripped off.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[homer_ca]

It's easy to say only listen to indie bands, but the musicians aren't the enemies, the labels are. It's easy to tell who's a sellout by their statements on downloading. Anti-P2P public service announcement? Sellout. Give away MP3's on the website like Offspring or write an anti-label song like The Ataris, Radio #2, or Korn, Y'all Want a Single? Not a sellout.

You can support bands by buying concert tickets or t-shirts, if you don't mind support other evil monopolies (Clear Channel and Ticketmaster).

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[ursabear]

Doing your own thing is very good. Making music is a true joy and a pleasure on the deepest of levels

But, on topic... It seems that most articles, of the type linked to on the BBC, seem to focus on file sharing, not on proliferation of copied music files. File sharing unto itself is a wonderful thing. I constantly share out/send out music files (mine, not stuff copied from others' works) using file sharing software. P2P is also great for lots of legitimate things, such as large high-res photography files, large high-res original music source, Photoshop project files, Logic project files, etc. etc.

It would be nice if the articles such as TFA would say things like "people in many countries who have shared unauthorized media..." instead of "people in many countries who have used P2P software to..."

Just my humble opinion... P2P isn't going anywhere.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[MostAwesomeDude]

Agreed. One of the sad side effects of Idiot America is that the new generation doesn't appreciate amazing guitarwork or groovy bass lines or solid time or meaningful lyrics. Guitarists once were asked how often they practiced; nowadays they're asked how they manage to get on the radio so much.

Support artists who don't bow down before the RIAA. There are people, like me, that only publish under Creative Commons and won't ever sign a record contract. Find them, listen to them, support them. Odds are they sound better than anything you'll find on the radio.

Above all, stop buying the music! Most music is not worth the cartel's price of $20 a CD. Hell, I could get three weeks of gas to commute to university and work for $20. The RIAA is still making roughly $40 billion a year. Maybe you working alone can't make a difference. That's fine. There's more than just a few of us. We are already clear enough on our position and large enough in numbers that it is scaring the shit out of these fat-cat businessmen, and forcing them to react in a rather panicked manner.

They aren't suing people for the hell of it, and they aren't suing people to recoup money. They're doing it to instill fear. Show them that you aren't afraid to defy them.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Chabil Ha']

Support artists who don't bow down before the RIAA. There are people, like me, that only publish under Creative Commons and won't ever sign a record contract. Find them, listen to them, support them. Odds are they sound better than anything you'll find on the radio.

In theory, this seems the best way to go. The problem is that the majority of people need to be weaned off of the nipple of mainstream music. Where can people go to get such music? Part of evangilizing a boycott is helping people find an alternative. How about a radio station that only plays independent artists? Every once in a while I'll stumble upon an 'indie' artist that'll give away a few singles but want you to buy the rest. Why? Because they want to be a bigshot like the guys getting all the radio play and $$$. Unless the 'creative commons' artists are easily accessable and get the good exposure like the RIAA whores, their undiscovered status is not likely to change.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[advocate_one]

Since the RIAA began their suicidal jihad, I taught myself to play the guitar. I'm no virtuoso or even very good by any objective measure, but there's about 100 times the satisfaction and enjoyment in playing the 10 tunes I know than in just listening to any song I've ever heard.

and the bastards are running a "Jihad" against the tab sharing sites... alledgedly, someone sharing their personal interpretation of the notes being played is a copyright violation...

It doesn't help their sales when the professionally produced "licensed" tabs are often wrong and are ridiculously overpriced to boot... A book of Lyrics and Bass Tab for Green Day is some £20 in our local music shop !!! just the fancy, schmancy book, nothing else with it... For that price, I'd have expected "official" backing tracks to practice with...

rip off alert...

I'm just waiting for more recent "fake" books to appear, then I'll be helping the samizdat type distribution of them... the current "fake" books I've found are fine for covering oldies, but next to useless for recent hits...

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[bky1701]

Didn't you hear? It's illegal to sell music if you are not in the RIAA.... if you get popular, you can bet you will be sued into next week for totally hairbrain reasons.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Kris_J]

Or make your own music. That's the best of all.

That's want I'm trying to do now. I've had some success using those music creation "games" for the Playstation and my copy of Electroplankton arrived yesterday. These programs mean that I can create music even though I don't even know how to play an instrument or read sheet music.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Anonymous Coward]

You can support bands by buying concert tickets or t-shirts, if you don't mind support other evil monopolies (Clear Channel and Ticketmaster).

Forget the whole concert thing. It's ridden with its own kind of crap. I went to a performance in what was formerly known as The Concord Pavillion in Concord, CA.There were people selling "upgraded" parking for $10 per car. I went to the "free" parking. What bullshit. Upon reading the 2-point type, I found a hefty parking fee was included in the ticket price. That's ON EACH ticket, for Christ's sake.

So, if I bring four other people in my car, we pay five parking fees for one space. If we all come separately, we pay five fees for five spaces. If we park a couple of miles ouside the venie o avid parking fees and hassle, WE STILL PAY FIVE PARKING FEES FOR ZERO SPACES.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder if music labels would fight back by putting restrictions on music people can compose if people prefered to make their own music, perhaps then people would look at original compositions; which could in turn cause the copyright of certain combinations of notes that are similar to major label music compositions.

It is all about money and I'm sure that if corporate death was the alternative, why not lobby for restrictions to what people can compose themselves?, didn't they do that with the Happy birthday song?

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[homer_ca]

Gotta agree there. It's been a few years since I've gone to a big-name concert, and they really rape your wallet 10 times worse than buying a $20 CD: $8 drinks, 50% Ticketmaster commission, parking hassles etc. etc. I guess you could still support your favorite bands by paying for an official fan club membership or buying a tshirt off their website.

Re:And I continue not to buy music

[The_Mr_Flibble]

I too taught myself to play the guitar for that very same reason, however it proved quite dangerous when driving to work.

Didn't see this coming

[Aperculum]

"a laboratory assistant has been charged in Finland"

Oh my god! Our safe haven is compromised! *flees to sweden*

Re:Didn't see this coming

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my! Living in Sweden I always considered Finland the safehaven. This makes me very nervous! Has the riaa laid any claims on antarctica yet? If not, then that is backup plan B as of now!

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

But evolution is a spiff piece of software!

Re:In other news..

[Anonymous Coward]

If God wanted you to have those mp3s you would have been born connected to an iPod

McSuckers

[Anonymous Coward]

People who listen to music are suckers who are just begging to get a rootkit or lawsuit. Or a McSpyware. Never, ever get involved with very big multinational corporations.

Freenet 0.5 Warez

[Anonymous Coward]

Freenet version 0.5 is where some people are going for warez - at least until 0.7 has a working open-net component.

Not the MPAA

[The Raven]

I hardly think the International Federation of the Porno^H^H^H^H^HPhonographic Industry would be considered the international relative of the Motion Picture Association of America. I think you're getting your *AA's mixed up. Perhaps you meant the Recording Industry Association of America?

The more you tighten your grip....

[Ritz_Just_Ritz]

the more star systems will slip through your fingers....

Re:The more you tighten your grip....

[tehSpork]

I don't think they're too concerned about star systems, it's the "rebel smuggling scum" they seem to be trying to stop...

Am I the only one who thinks this is ridiculous? If people are pirating things, it's likely that they can not afford it or wouldn't afford it if they had to buy it through normal channels. Therefore a company working to prevent piracy is spending money on a venture that is not profitable for them in the end (that is, unless they turn to suing the socks off people who are found guilty) and that generally pisses off the genuine customers attempting to use the product they paid for. Why bother?

"...while a parson has been served with action..."

[terrahertz]

A parson has been served with action? Who knew the clergy were itchin' for the latest Snoop Dogg so bad they couldn't wait for it to ship!

Intimidation ?

[quiberon2]

Copyright law is fine ... well, actually, I would rather that it had been left the way that the Berne Convention had it about 20 years ago, and we should have spent our efforts understanding what it was, rather than changing it.

But the owners of commercial content ... Star Wars DVDs, if you like ... are going round intimidating people away from doing things that they have a perfect right to do, such as putting recordings of them singing songs they have written themselves on their own web sites for distribution to anyone in the world who cares to take them.

There should be some sanction against a cartel intimidaring someone into paying when no money is due. Is there any such sanction ? Jail time for fraud, maybe ?

Re:Intimidation ?

[Mattintosh]

The USA has RICO, but good luck making that stick to anyone who pays lobbyists in DC.

Re:Intimidation ?

[cpt kangarooski]

Copyright law is fine ... well, actually, I would rather that it had been left the way that the Berne Convention had it about 20 years ago, and we should have spent our efforts understanding what it was, rather than changing it.

Feh. Berne is crap. It does a lot of awful things, such as eliminating formalities, causing terms to be very long, requiring certain classes of works to be copyrightable even though it is silly for them to be (e.g. architectural works), etc.

I'd rather we got rid of Berne and let each country choose whatever copyright laws it felt served its own people best, so long as they still offered national treatment unilaterally, and did avoid causing situations where copyrights in certain countries were exclusive of one another. Other than that, I see no good resulting from copyright treaties.

Scare tactics

[Anonymous Coward]

As usual the anti-piracy dumbs are running their "scare tactics", saying things like "we sued a a laboratory assistant, a school teacher, a nurse, a grandma, young little kid, old granny, this poor black guy, that rich white guy, etc etc" saying they suing everybody and it can happen to everybody so people supposed get scared.

There is less chance of getting sued for file-sharing than winning the lottery.

There are constantly coming new software and new means to share files, and the anti-piracy dumbs cant keep up with it.
More and more people are getting Internet, and connections are getting faster and faster.
Which should make anonymous file-sharing more efficient and fast.

SSL, cryptography, darknets...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P

Re:Scare tactics

[mumblestheclown]

so, what you're saying is that they should sue more people? i agree. there's nothing wrong with p2p per se - but if somebody breaks the law and it can be shown within reasonable doubt that they have, then they should be punished. if you personally disagree with copyright law / private property / speed limits / income taxes / whatever, and if you want to "protest" by breaking the law, then be prepared to accept the consequences.

How soon before Tor incorporated into FS nets?

[davidwr]

Someday, maybe soon, the most popular peer-to-peer networks will have TOR or something similar built in and turned on by default, with the seed- and data-carrying nodes hidden behind .onion. Yeah the speed sucks but subpeonas suck worse.

I'd love to see the RIAA try to shut down a beowulf cluster of those babies.

Re:How soon before Tor incorporated into FS nets?

[Virgil Tibbs]

the major problem is that tor eats up lots of bandwidth people generally dont want to switch bandwidth with safety until there is an actual threat the amount of people the RIAA etc have subpeoned etc is laughable compared to the number of people using these services the chances of being caught are very remote however i think at least end to end encryption is in order so the ISP cant spy on you

Re:How soon before Tor incorporated into FS nets?

[Shimmer]

.,.,,.,.,

I found these on the ground. I think you must've dropped your punctuation, sir.

You can do it with a scanner...

[Cyno01]

too. I remember some article on here about that a while ago.

Re:You can do it with a scanner...

[AdamD1]

That would be this guy:

http://www.cs.huji.ac.il/~springer/

However that was extremely experimental and not what anyone would call even medium quality.

Of more interest is the research being done by the library of congress and the Berkeley physics department.

http://www.primidi.com/2004/04/19.html

They discovered you can use the same methods used in the discovery of the Higgs Boson particle to scan cylinder recordings which are too brittle to be played by traditional means. The results of those experiments are pretty astounding.

ad

OT

[Anonymous Coward]

West Wing fan? Just going by your signature.

Re:OT

[imaginaryelf]

Nah, I've never really watched West Wing. In what context was it mentioned?

There's an angle I didn't consider

[tkrotchko]

Sue people until profits are restored.

I like it. It's catchy, people will fear you. Seriously.

Re:There's an angle I didn't consider

[Anonymous Coward]

they already are profitable...

music in perspective

[beaverfever]

You bring home a point about the entertainment industry that most people seem to forget. This is all about entertainment. The RIAA et al are up in arms because for them the whole piracy thing is about money, their bread and butter. It's show-biz.

However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product. Nobody needs the latest hit singles. Nobody needs box sets, DVD extras, or music libraries of 10,000 songs. We want them.

The entertainment industry, as in any other area of business, relies on supply and demand, and (as I have commented on before in /. threads), the huge amount of piracy which occurs only proves to the entertainment industry that demand is there. If you have never visited an Asian country, you have no idea how pervasive piracy of entertainment and software is throughout the world. It is huge.

Anyone who argues against DRM or says the entertainment industry is somehow ripping off "the people", yet fights this through anti-DRM software, or some sort of piracy, or other means of getting the industry product they want on their own terms, they lose some respect from me.

I say, put up or shut up. If you don't like what the RIAA does, if you think labels only offer music that sucks, if DVDs are overpriced or you don't like the "new release-newer release with extras" cycle, don't respond by taking their product on your own terms. That just says that you do indeed value that product and are willing to pay for it, just not in upfront cash - you are confirming the demand for the product.

If you really mean what you say, respond by not accepting their product on any terms. Remove the demand entirely, and the market will react.

Buy a guitar, a piano, an accordian or whatever, and learn how to play it. Go see a play in a local theatre instead of a major corporate Broadway tour. Don't initiate your kids into the corporate entertainment addiction by buying them cross-branded toys. Stop feeding the monkey on your back and turn off your fricking television. Entertain yourself and those around you instead of relying on someone else (corporations) to provide your escapism for you. You will probably find yourself living a more rewarding life.

Re:music in perspective

[jb.hl.com]

I absolutely 100% agree with you. Thank you for putting my views in the clear, concise way that I can't :)

Re:music in perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop feeding the monkey on your back and turn off your fricking television. Entertain yourself and those around you instead of relying on someone else (corporations) to provide your escapism for you. You will probably find yourself living a more rewarding life.

But how will I know if Clark and Lana get back together?

Re:music in perspective

[pandrijeczko]

Anyone who argues against DRM or says the entertainment industry is somehow ripping off "the people", yet fights this through anti-DRM software, or some sort of piracy, or other means of getting the industry product they want on their own terms, they lose some respect from me.

I'd actually go one better than that and state that piracy activities create an justification for the money-grabbing thieving corporations to push DRM and copyright restrictions through much easier.

Apart from that, way to go man, agree with everything else. The sooner the mindless sheeple disconnect their brains from the constant assault of advertising and hype, the sooner they'll realise that their being ripped off more and more for less and less content.

Nothing beats a little intelligence and research - if you don't think something is worth the money then just don't buy it.

Re:music in perspective

[locofungus]

However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product. Nobody needs the latest hit singles. Nobody needs box sets, DVD extras, or music libraries of 10,000 songs. We want them.

It's not just entertainment. School text books are now starting to come out with DRM. Before long you won't be able to buy a paper version or a non DRM version at all.

And some people don't "steal" music. My partner really does have more music on CD than she can fit on an iPod. And a significant proportion of that is music she already owns on LP (not necessarily the same recording). But despite the fact that for every single "song" on her iPod she owns the CD, and quite often also a record, it's still technically (probably[1]) illegal in the UK

[1] I say probably because there are exceptions for "private study" in the Copyright, designs and patents act and she has enough music qualifications to be able to show that she really does study music, not just listen to it.

I had a smaller record collection. I've rebought them on CD - for stuff I really liked I bought the same recording on CD, other stuff I just bought the same music, different orchestra, conductor etc. At the time I gave (some) of the old records to friends/family and binned the rest. They've probably all been binned by now.

The DRM crowd want to go a step further still. They want to be able to stop me referencing my old college text books. They want to stop you referencing that 2005 edition of the encyclopedia but make you buy a new one instead.

I grew up on old encyclopedias, my parents couldn't possibly have afforded a new one, let alone one every year. And 99% of whats in a 10,20 or even 50 year old encyclopedia isn't useless although there are wonderful things to be found; "Silicon, an abundant but mostly useless element."

Tim.

Re:music in perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

wrong. As long as there have been human beings, there has been music. Music is part of our culture. It is as integral to the dissemination of culture as speech is. The very thing that defines us as a speciesd is that we communicate throught speech, music and art.

We now have corporations that have made culture a product that can be owned. It may be a little bad if some person who bought shares last week in a company that bought the rights 20 years ago to a song written 50 years ago is somehow deprived of their "due" revenue from a person listing to that old song this week... but it is far worse that we are creating a pay-per-view/listen/read culture.

Now, don't tell me that people are still free to talk and write to their friends and sing their own songs. The fact of the matter is that if you don't PAY to participate in our new culture, you have a lot more trouble getting news, knowing what's going on, etc.

If you don't or can't PAY to be part of the human culture now, you are at a huge disadvantage - you will likely be doomed to a life of poverty, of a lack of control over your destiny, a life with a lack of freedoms.

People forget that this is NOT NORMAL. "intellectual property" is a very new idea... in its modern form its less than 100 years old... and these property "rights" are being carved out of nothing more and more all the time.

For essentially the first time in human history, human culture itself is being defined as the property of the elite few that the masses must pay for access to.

This is going to have horrible long-term repercussions.

Re:music in perspective

[Plutonite]

I agree with this being a good idea, but you are missing the point. Not everybody can do this, or is willing to, and even if that were the case the point at hand is quite different.

Nobody should be forced to boycott the music industry because that just means that we are reinforcing the authority the RIAA claim to have over our lives. DRM is not something I will succumb to, even if it means I have to download torrents instead of buying my music at the store. We are supposedly citizens that have a right to decide the laws which govern private industries in the "free" world. We should not have to hide in caves and abandon our entertainment for something unconstitutional.

Or maybe I'm just new here :)

Re:music in perspective

[danpsmith]

I say, put up or shut up. If you don't like what the RIAA does, if you think labels only offer music that sucks, if DVDs are overpriced or you don't like the "new release-newer release with extras" cycle, don't respond by taking their product on your own terms. That just says that you do indeed value that product and are willing to pay for it, just not in upfront cash - you are confirming the demand for the product.

What if I do value the product? I like listening to music. I play guitar as well, and I like to play the music I listen to (*gasp*), it's a good way of learning. What I don't like and don't care for is people who are richer than me telling me how they need my 20 bucks. They don't. And I'm about sick of them saying you are gonna get caught filesharing: you won't. The chances of you getting caught filesharing are about the same as the chances of you getting caught in a terrorist attack. They are slim to nil. They are irritated because their stranglehold on the market is loosening, and not only that. It's completely possible to write, perform, produce and distribute yourself without a major label record deal. You might not get fantastically rich, but the option remains. This is all very irritating to them.

I must say, if it weren't for file sharing, I wouldn't even listen to most of the stuff I do anyway. It would've just kept me a small minded listener, buying the latest derivative crap so that I'd be sure I'd actually get my money's worth on the CD.

So lose respect if you want, but there's an alternative to the RIAA, and it's called P2P. The black market is a part of economics too, I guess these asshats didn't pay attention to that part and stuck to the good sounding parts of monopoly and price fixing.

Every concert I've attended and every piece of band merchandise I bought since college has been due to filesharing. Maybe I would've been a nice little trooper in the TRL army, and maybe that's what they wanted for me. But now I know better, and things will never go back to the way they were. It's stealing? Whatever, I bought many a CD that should've been put in the garbage can, and those artists make more money than I ever will in my life. Tell me I owe them a paycheck. I dare you.

Re:music in perspective

[Catamaran]

No. It's not about whether the music (or movie) is a classic or a piece of crap. It's not about the cost. It's about control and it goes way beyond entertainment. When a handful of megacorporations control %99 of the mass media it's time to fear for our culture, our democracy, and our civilization.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"No. It's not about whether the music (or movie) is a classic or a piece of crap. It's not about the cost. It's about control and it goes way beyond entertainment."

You say "no", but you reiterate the main thrust of my comment: taking personal control. Perhaps I was not as clear as I should have been.

Stop relying on the corporations. Crying if they behave badly is not taking personal responsibility. Stand up, take personal responsibility, take control... take yourself out of the equation and don't be their consumer. Not accepting their product and finding alternatives to their business model is taking control. Accepting their product under one's own conditions (bypassing DRM, piracy, whatever) is not taking control. In that case the supply side still lies with the industry, and so they still control you, because they control the supply of product. Reject the supply altogether, and they are no longer in control, because their rules become irrelevant.

It's much like a junkie and a pusher - however the junkie gets his smack from the pusher (buying, stealing, cheating), the pusher still controls the supply, the market and the junkie. If the pusher alters the quality of the supply or its quantity, the junkie suffers. The pusher will still make his money by changing the rules of the market and charging more to those who pay, making more people unhappy, and the junkie suffers. Eliminate the addiction, and the pusher, the market, the rules and the supply are irrelevant.

Expecting an industry to change because you are unhappily buying their product, or fighting an industry's dirty tricks with more dirty tricks, are not taking personal responsibility to finding an alternative; they are expecting and/or forcing others to change to avoid personal change.

Yes, this certainly does go beyond entertainment, but the fight over entertainment seems to be the loudest, which in itself says a lot about our society and its expectations. However, taking personal control and responsibility, and finding real alternatives to established models, applies wherever an excessive imbalance of power and control exists.

Re:music in perspective

[crabpeople]

You do know that alot of music isnt produced by the RIAA right?
The other fact is that in alot of cases, the RIAA has a defacto monopoly on representing big labels that are signing artists. If you want to get radio play in Canada and the usa, you need to be on a major label. So obviously most mainsream music is owned by the riaa, and if you only listen to the radio thats what you are hearing.

What most people I know do however, is find music through alternate channels. The last album I downloaded was by Lady Sovereign. Why would I want to download hanson, or whatever is popular today, when I can get way better bands from all over the world?

The problem with people like you is that you are shilling for the record industry, reinforcing their view that only the music that they own and they control is desireable to download. This is simply out of touch with reality.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"I agree with this being a good idea, but you are missing the point. Not everybody can do this, or is willing to, and even if that were the case the point at hand is quite different.

Nobody should be forced to boycott the music industry because that just means that we are reinforcing the authority the RIAA claim to have over our lives. DRM is not something I will succumb to, even if it means I have to download torrents instead of buying my music at the store. We are supposedly citizens that have a right to decide the laws which govern private industries in the "free" world. We should not have to hide in caves and abandon our entertainment for something unconstitutional."

I am not missing the point. Anybody can do this (what did people do for entertainment up until 60-70 years ago?), and if they're not willing, then they shouldn't be complaining. It's that simple. Remember the old saying, if you don't vote, don't complain? If you're not willing to make a personal effort to change your own habits to reject something you oppose, then stop complaining.

If you download torrents, then you are empowering the industry which you say you oppose. You make them and their product relevant and important. It is that simple. Nobody has to hide in a cave or abandon entertainment; the suggestion that people would have to give up entertainment, that perhaps Disney-tainment is the only option available, is small-minded and naive.

If you're not willing to give up something as relatively insignificant as pop-culture product, and not willing to alter your product consumption habits, then what are you willing to do to stop this unconstitutional behaviour you oppose so much? How much pain or discomfort are you willing to endure to stand up for what you believe is right?

Re:music in perspective

[Kjella]

I say, put up or shut up. If you don't like what the RIAA does, if you think labels only offer music that sucks, if DVDs are overpriced or you don't like the "new release-newer release with extras" cycle, don't respond by taking their product on your own terms. That just says that you do indeed value that product and are willing to pay for it, just not in upfront cash - you are confirming the demand for the product.

I don't know about you, but in my case it's that I only want to pay in upfront cash. I don't want to hit any region codes (I've got DVDs from three regions now and not going back), I don't want any unskippable ads, I don't want to buy a new monitor because my perfectly capable one doesn't support HDCP, I want to put them on my HTPC, I don't want to buy a new if it gets scratched (it's a 10 cent disk with a 10 dollar movie - it's like finding out you can't replace wear parts on your car). I want to be able to put in a CD and burn an MP3 CD for use in my car, or copy to my MP3 player.

I want to buy a copy that I can then watch the way I want, no matter what format or medium or playback device I choose to use including making fair use copies to achieve that. My copy is mine and I can view it, lend it, sell it or whatever else I choose to do with it as long as all fair use copies go with it or is destroyed. That right is not contingent on any activation, authorization, transfer or revocation service from the copyright holder, it is inherent and inalienably stored in my copy. That I can't make copies for sale, public performance and so on is fair enough.

You might of course say that is unreasonable and that I have no right to dictate what terms they should sell copies under, even though they affect my use of it in ways that has nothing do to with the copyright holder's law, but you are wrong. Courts have upheld rights that the copyright holder doesn't want to grant, it is not an absolute right. The fact that everything is now licensed, not sold is another symptom of this disease, in which they both legally and technologically go into my living room and tell me what I can and can't do.

People "confirm demand" because they are demand. And I will get my supply from those who provide the superior product. In that sense, it seems awfully stupid make your product artificially inferior, but what do I know. I'm only a consumer.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"The problem with people like you is that you are shilling for the record industry, reinforcing their view that only the music that they own and they control is desireable to download. This is simply out of touch with reality."

Excuse me, but I am encouraging people to put their money where their mouth is and completely reject the music industry instead of legitimising the RIAA and the flawed entertainment industry business model. I wrote:

"If you really mean what you say, respond by not accepting their product on any terms. Remove the demand entirely, and the market will react."

"Entertain yourself and those around you instead of relying on someone else (corporations) to provide your escapism for you. You will probably find yourself living a more rewarding life."

Just because I encourage people to stop whining and to take personal responsibility does not make me a shill for a corporation. Sucking on the teat of an industry while complaining of its unfairness and injustice is hypocritical and self-defeating, no matter how much legitimacy the complaints may have.

Re:music in perspective

[King_TJ]

Right.... p2p sharing and other forms of music sharing are simply part of the whole economic "ball of wax". Legal issues completely aside for a minute, the bottom line is always "Do I, the customer, feel like the seller is offering goods or services I want at a price that's reasonable?"

The recording industry basically had 4 options available to them.

1. Follow the trend towards digital music distribution. Quit selling music on pre-recorded CD, and instead, start their own online digital music services, plus kiosks at stores which could burn discs on-demand for customers.

2. Fight to preserve the status-quo with legal wrangling and threats.

3. Reduce prices to make it a more cost-effective option to keep buying their music CDs than to waste time and effort downloading them digitally.

4. Do nothing and let their business die.

I think a combination of choices 1 and 3 would have been optimal, but either would have been acceptable. Instead, they chose 2, which will ultimately bring them similar results to chosing option 4.

All the file sharing they throw fits about comes about because their product, despite having some "value" to people, is overpriced. If I could buy albums at the store for $2-3 each, I'd do so all the time, and buy many more than I've ever bought at a time in the past. That would also drastically reduce p2p sharing because the cost of someone's blank media plus time, plus hassle of getting the occasional sub-standard audio quality download wouldn't make it worth doing anymore.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"What if I do value the product? I like listening to music. I play guitar as well, and I like to play the music I listen to (*gasp*), it's a good way of learning."

"What I don't like and don't care for is people who are richer than me telling me how they need my 20 bucks. They don't."

If you value the product, then pay for it and don't complain. If it costs too much, then don't buy it. You're not Jean Valjean stealing bread for your family.

The more passionate you are in your conviction that how they act is wrong, then the more discomfort you should be willing to endure in your opposition to them. By using P2P to take their product you legitimise the product by creating demand, you legitimise their actions against P2P, and you take the easy, soft, cushy way out instead of really doing something that would make a difference and take control away from them.

If you are not small-minded, then really explore alternatives outside those you already know.

Re:music in perspective

[danpsmith]

If you value the product, then pay for it and don't complain. If it costs too much, then don't buy it. You're not Jean Valjean stealing bread for your family.

It does cost too much, so I don't buy it. =P

I suppose it is stealing, although you aren't taking anything physical. There's not opportunity cost involved. If I download an album instead of buying it, I'm not taking a physical CD off a shelf that could be sold to another. At very most I'm stealing my own potential sale. Most times, that potential sale would've been worth $0 anyway, because I wouldn't have bought the album at the price it was at. It falls into the realm of perhaps cable theft and other petty crime that happens only because you as the consumer have no real control over the market.

I am going to explore the alternatives. I like a lot of bands now though and I'm not going to quit listening to them because the RIAA doesn't like that I'm doing it for free. I'm more musically driven than politically motivated to be honest, and while one might have something to do with the other in this case, the music wins out. I'm going to try to see if there's stuff I like under creative commons, which I'm sure there will be. That's the way music should be, and it's how I'll release my music should I ever make an album.

Re:music in perspective

[Plutonite]

What I'm saying is that we should not have to endure "pain and discomfort", because in a society that collectively believes something to be right there should be no reason for anybody to be branding us as wrong, except if we are being oppressed.

I am a rather natural musician, due to both my parents being musicians and raising me on Chopin and Mozart..etc. There is little that I like better than a good guitar session with my friends....BUT: I can't do this all the time. I want - and should be able - to listen to music that I have bought while I work for e.g. We cannot dictate how people should entertain themselves without the industry, because that means the IRAA has won.

Not listening to the products of the music industry is not the same as "consuming it in another way". We should not give in. "Voting" in this matter involves not boycotting music but effective lobbying to change the laws that supposedly reflect the beliefs of the population.

Apart from these ideological grounds, I honestly don't think anybody is going to do what you have suggested. Nice idea in theory, but it won't happen anytime soon.

Re:music in perspective

[Anonymous Coward]

However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product.

"Yea, and those damn blacks raising such a stink about sitting in front of the bus, as if there aren't more important things than where you sit in the bus."
You can make any struggle seem ridiculous by framing it in a ridiculous way.

Re:music in perspective

[drsmithy]

However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product. Nobody needs the latest hit singles. Nobody needs box sets, DVD extras, or music libraries of 10,000 songs. We want them.

"Entertainment" == culture. People don't "need" those things, no (but then again, apart from food and shelter, what do people really "need"), but they are a critical part of a mature and functional society.

The entertainment industry, as in any other area of business, relies on supply and demand, and (as I have commented on before in /. threads), the huge amount of piracy which occurs only proves to the entertainment industry that demand is there.

The problem is, mass reproduction and distribution of copyrighted material breaks the supply and demand model, because the supply is infinite.

Anyone who argues against DRM or says the entertainment industry is somehow ripping off "the people", yet fights this through anti-DRM software, or some sort of piracy, or other means of getting the industry product they want on their own terms, they lose some respect from me.

The problem isn't DRM, the problem is the fundamental business models that copyright encourages. It's taken the "digital revolution" with widespread, easy, cheap access to essentially free reproduction and distribution infrastructure to really make this obvious though.

Re:music in perspective

[asuffield]

However, the arguments which come out of anti-DRM people et al really come across as being pathetic at times. There is a pervading sense that fundamental human rights are being trampled on, when we are talking about entertainment product. Nobody needs the latest hit singles. Nobody needs box sets, DVD extras, or music libraries of 10,000 songs.

Fundamental human rights are being trampled on, but you've managed to not mention any of them. Your right to share music that you created and recorded yourself is being gradually eliminated with mandatory DRM systems. Things that have been given to you under a free license are being locked down by them. The DRM cartels are attempting to force everybody into their business model, and lock out anybody who doesn't want to commercialise their efforts. Any "free use" or "fair dealing" rights that you have (under law) are being quietly obliterated through technical measures. We still have non-DRMed media available today.... but how long will that last, with new devices appearing all the time that make no provision for other options?

It is not a matter of "pay for their stuff or don't get access to it". It is a matter of "pay for their stuff and don't get access to any other stuff".

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

""Entertainment" == culture. People don't "need" those things, no (but then again, apart from food and shelter, what do people really "need"), but they are a critical part of a mature and functional society."

Yes, of course, but where does it say that this entertainment/culture must come from the corporations, from Madonna or U2? The culture generated by you with a banjo and a friend with a piano on a friday night in the living room is just as relevant and does as much or more to advance you as an individual and society as a whole as any CD you could buy in a store.

I could argue that mass-market culture actually holds people back and inhibits personal growth and development, as it removes the need/desire for individuals to take the initiative and develop their own culture instead of having it handed to them. The growth and development of people (or lack thereof) is reflected in society and culture.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"Fundamental human rights are being trampled on"

So, going back to my first comment, stop playing their game, stop giving them relevance, stop giving them justification for their aims. If the DRM cartels are irrelevant, then they are powerless. It will hurt them far more than it will hurt you.

The problem lies with people who want the entertainment industry and government to be coerced into making dramatic changes to their way of thinking, but without making any changes to their own way of thinking, their own expectations and their own behaviour.

It's not that great of a personal sacrifice to resist the "new release" marketing machine, stop buying/downloading/bootlegging new CDs and DVDs, and just be content with what you've got now. What will give you greater personal satisfaction: seeing the DRM cartels turned upside down, or having the newest release from your favourite band? If you want change, make change happen.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"I honestly don't think anybody is going to do what you have suggested. Nice idea in theory, but it won't happen anytime soon."

You are right, and I am fully aware of that. The decades of pervasive marketing and hype around entertainment product have become invisible to most people and so the suggestion that someone not possess a new release product on any terms is considered absolutely ridiculous, inconceivable, by most people. Every product this industry sells is 100% want-based, but it has become so ingrained in society that it is often considered need-based; food, water, air, Star Wars DVDs. It is an addiction, with denial and withdrawal pain and everything else that goes with it.

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we've been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. It is simply too painful to acknowledge even to ourselves that we've been so credulous." -Carl Sagan

Don't get me wrong; I enjoy good music or movies as much as anyone else, but if someone wants change, they can't continue with business as usual. Complaining is not enough.

Re:music in perspective

[asuffield]

It's not that great of a personal sacrifice to resist the "new release" marketing machine, stop buying/downloading/bootlegging new CDs and DVDs, and just be content with what you've got now.

Did you read anything I wrote? It doesn't matter whether you want their media. You have to pay them anyway - they're passing laws to force you, and ensuring that new devices are locked down whether you use them to play their media or your own home videos. I don't even like any of the stuff that the DRM cartels produce - I am not into western pop slush or Hollywood action movies.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"So, going back to my first comment, stop playing their game, stop giving them relevance, stop giving them justification for their aims. If the DRM cartels are irrelevant, then they are powerless. It will hurt them far more than it will hurt you.

The problem lies with people who want the entertainment industry and government to be coerced into making dramatic changes to their way of thinking, but without making any changes to their own way of thinking, their own expectations and their own behaviour."

So how do you suggest we stop this trampling of our fundamental rights? Shall we complain longer, or shall we complain louder?

Re:music in perspective

[drsmithy]

Yes, of course, but where does it say that this entertainment/culture must come from the corporations, from Madonna or U2?

Nowhere.

(Not sure I see the relevance though...)

The culture generated by you with a banjo and a friend with a piano on a friday night in the living room is just as relevant and does as much or more to advance you as an individual and society as a whole as any CD you could buy in a store.

Well, I'd have to say it's eminently arguable whether a quick game of duelling banjos has the same cultural relevance as, say, Beethoven or Shakespeare...

I could argue that mass-market culture actually holds people back and inhibits personal growth and development, as it removes the need/desire for individuals to take the initiative and develop their own culture instead of having it handed to them.

I have to say I think you'd have a tough time arguing that. You're essentially saying that everyone is a creative genius, but being held back by popular culture, and I think that would be a pretty tough argument to support (in any fashion at all).

Some people simply aren't creatively or artistically gifted, just like others struggle with higher-level mathematics and still others couldn't keep a pencil and notepad neat on an empty desk.

Re:music in perspective

[beaverfever]

"I have to say I think you'd have a tough time arguing that."

Who is more culturally advanced: a community in which one or two people in each family play instruments and entertainment revolves around them performing on weekends with family and friends at home parties, or a community where everyone listens to music on CDs, watches television and goes to nightclubs to dance to music from CDs on weekends?

I'm not declaring one or the other the winner. I'm just saying it's not so tough to argue. Just because the marketing of modern corporate entertainment is omnipresent doesn't mean we are more culturally advanced than any other period in our history, or that Los Angeles or London is more culturally advanced than a village in Botswana.

In times and places without mass-market entertainment, people entertain themselves, and culture developed from that - and, in those cases, people use(d) their minds to entertain themselves (whether genius or otherwise), instead of turning their minds off to be entertained - which option bears more benefit for society?

Re:music in perspective

[drsmithy]

Who is more culturally advanced: a community in which one or two people in each family play instruments and entertainment revolves around them performing on weekends with family and friends at home parties, or a community where everyone listens to music on CDs, watches television and goes to nightclubs to dance to music from CDs on weekends?

Well, that depends...

(You are presenting a false dilemma.)

I'm not declaring one or the other the winner. I'm just saying it's not so tough to argue.

But you _are_ declaring one the winner - which is why I'm pointing out it's hard to argue that isolated, "unknown" artistic achievements are of greater cultural significant than those that awe and influence generations of viewers.

Just because the marketing of modern corporate entertainment is omnipresent doesn't mean we are more culturally advanced than any other period in our history, or that Los Angeles or London is more culturally advanced than a village in Botswana.

Well, I'd say we (as in "western society") _are_ more "culturally advanced", but I don't think it's got anything to do with mass-market media/entertainment.

In times and places without mass-market entertainment, people entertain themselves, and culture developed from that - and, in those cases, people use(d) their minds to entertain themselves (whether genius or otherwise), instead of turning their minds off to be entertained - which option bears more benefit for society?

Again, this is a false dilemma.

Boycott... but not everyone

[h2g2bob]

Don't forget theres actually a lot of music from non-riaa record labels

Theres "big" labels like Magnatune, plenty of small ones, and some cases of artists selling music themselves, like, ... er... MySpace.

Re:Boycott... but not everyone

[vertinox]

I own a small record label myself (see my link). Personally, I found it amusing that one of our bands actually made it on Piratebay. Heck... We are getting free publicity.

We are putting together a MP3 website to sell songs through PayPal just because otherwise we'd hav eto deal with Apple's DRM and most of don't like the idea of giving Newscorporation any money through Myspace.

Re:Boycott... but not everyone

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sorry, but only very ignorant people use PayPal. Please add Fairplay DRM to your music, it's easy to get rid of (which I do on all the music I buy from iTunes).

Re:Boycott... but not everyone

[vertinox]

I'm sorry, but only very ignorant people use PayPal.

Eh... If you say so. Most of our foreign T-Shirt orders are paid with pay pal, but to be fair we plan on offering payment by Visa and Google Cash.

Re:Boycott... but not everyone

[NewYorkCountryLawyer]

I've actually been collecting a list of links to sources of non-RIAA music on my blog; I call it "Liberated Music". Any suggestions for additions to the list?

Thank God

[stmr]

I use ARES and eMule. :P

Re:Thank God

[Aquila Deus]

eMule is the eDonkey client ;)

Greed and Creativity

[hypoxide]

Since when do they go hand-in-hand?

Music is not a commodity, it is an art. It is not meant to be sold, it is meant to be heard and played. It is meant to be shared and it will be. Try as it may, the corporate music industry cannot stop this movement. I look forward to its rapture.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[kabocox]

Music is not a commodity, it is an art. It is not meant to be sold, it is meant to be heard and played. It is meant to be shared and it will be. Try as it may, the corporate music industry cannot stop this movement. I look forward to its rapture.

What century did you walk out of? Music has hardly ever been about art. It's always been about leeching much from sponsors. Usually they were rich nobles, merchants, or priests. You know what. This all really started about copyright over song lyrics and sheet music. Those with the contracts with rich folks wanted a percentage from anyone that tried to use their work. It's amazing that we've actually have all the different types of music today. It isn't because of the musical industry. Musicans have always been about making money and living comfortably off it and teaching tone-deaf rich brats how to play passing music to be considered cultural.

How ever you dislike the concept, music is a commodity. (I'm not sure if commodity is the proper economic term, but it works for me.) The only reason that you think music is an art is because of the centuries hold that they've had over impressing into the minds of the rich that to be cultured that you need to be able to play or identify "classical" music. My culture is different than that. Slashdot and webcomics are part of my culture. Music is part of my culture as being in the background of video games and what's on the radio on the way home. In the 1500-1700s music may have been high end culture, but through the 1950-current music is now universal. Today you don't have sponsor you own musican to write & play a love song for your girl friend/wife/mistress. Today, everyone has access to music. Maybe musicans would be happy if some one did manage to rig a system for personalized love song writing/playing on an affordable scale.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[hypoxide]

Music has hardly ever been about art. It's always been about leeching much from sponsors. Usually they were rich nobles, merchants, or priests.

Music has always been about art. Those who have chosen music as a profession do so with hopes that their music will provide an income sufficient for survival. As with any art form, especially the entertaining arts (dance, music, jest), the performer will most likely struggle to survive. Such has been the case with minstrels, jesters, painters, play writers, etc since their nascence. As with any employee, one needs a benefactor.

The only reason that you think music is an art...

Uhhh.

...is because of the centuries hold that they've had over impressing into the minds of the rich that to be cultured that you need to be able to play or identify "classical" music. My culture is different than that. Slashdot and webcomics are part of my culture. Music is part of my culture as being in the background of video games and what's on the radio on the way home.

"Classical" music is something to be appreciated. If one cannot appreciate it, oh well, their loss. To condescend toward one, or to be condescended upon by a social class for not knowing a classical piece... perhaps this is you drawing a stereotype? If you feel oppressed because of your lack of musical knowledge, that's really a shame but I can't figure out what that has to do with this. I'm sure there is music in the background of your video games, perhaps to provide a feel to the game or whatever. But to claim it is merely some ambient garble that really has no meaning is nonsense. It was created. It was composed by a musician--an artist--who has chosen video game music to be his medium.

As for "what's on the radio on the way home". That's fine. Music isn't for everyone, much the same as Celtic dance isn't for everyone. Certainly the former (more specifically "pop music") sports much higher exposure, but had it been the latter, one who is not interested would find it blasé and really have little appreciation for it. Personally I feel that the majority of music that makes it to the radio are awful, simple, anesthetized, pathetic, factory-line created, template garbage that's purpose is sale not creativity (with exceptions, of course). I'll stick to NPR.

What century did you walk out of?

The same one you did, where not everyone has the same scope of culture that you have.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[Explodicle]

Uh, you can go ahead and keep looking forward to that rapture of yours. I'm going to actually do something and boycott the RIAA.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[kabocox]

"Classical" music is something to be appreciated. If one cannot appreciate it, oh well, their loss.

Classical music is just a style of music. I don't appreciate just because its older or uses a vast amount of performers. I just don't like most of it.

I'm sure there is music in the background of your video games, perhaps to provide a feel to the game or whatever. But to claim it is merely some ambient garble that really has no meaning is nonsense. It was created. It was composed by a musician--an artist--who has chosen video game music to be his medium.

Um, I don't buy a video game for its music. Good video game music shows up through series. It's not something magical just catchy or just not mindnumbely annoying. Think the mario background music or the classic FF music. I don't buy any video game because of music. It just happens to be there in the background. Honestly, I've wondered how different game sounds could be if instead of game background music they focus on sound effects.

Certainly the former (more specifically "pop music") sports much higher exposure, but had it been the latter, one who is not interested would find it blasé and really have little appreciation for it. Personally I feel that the majority of music that makes it to the radio are awful, simple, anesthetized, pathetic, factory-line created, template garbage that's purpose is sale not creativity (with exceptions, of course). I'll stick to NPR.

You know I'm sick and tired of hearing that music off the radio is weak compared other sources of music. I happen to actually like that mass produced factory music. I don't like cussing language that gets into modern music, but the actual music and the chorus parts I generally really like. I couldn't tell you a single title or artist that I like, but I could tell you which one's upon hearing if I like it or not.

I guess that's part of why "art" and "music" always bugged me through school. Most of it was centered around idenfitication of what was supposedly classical art/music. To be honest you have to go through a music/art program for your opinion to count to music folk otherwise you are just a popular consumer of the worst forms of music in their eyes. I've met one too many musicians with this opinion and its just bugged me. Just because they believe that they or their friends or their selected playlist is better to what I listen to off the radio doesn't mean it actually is true.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Since when do they go hand in hand? See Enron.

Re:Greed and Creativity

[Anonymous Coward]

Join us - and make sure to bring a friend.

Wait!

[crhylove]

Are you sure it isn't because another rehashed version of some boy band you never liked is all they're selling? The only stuff I download is new albums by bands I already liked..... And I figure they have my money already from the old albums, or even ticket sales.....

Re:Wait!

[Skreems]

This is simply not true. There are tons of great new bands out there, some of them even signed to major labels. They just don't get radio time or videos on MTV. Look places other than the Top 40 hangouts, and you'll find some amazing new stuff.

Re:"...while a parson has been served with action.

[pandrijeczko]

Perhaps he was sharing Judas Priest songs...

I'll get my coat...

MAFIAA

[tepples]

The IFPI is the international counterpart of the RIAA not MPAA. The MPAA is movies, the RIAA is music, the IFPI is music.

True, but does it matter? MPAA and RIAA, are both Music And Film Industry Associations. Besides, Sony (of rootkit notoriety) is in both, and so were Warner and Universal until recently.

Bittorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know how they distinguish an uploader from a downloader on Bittorrent? This is the first time I've heard of bittorrent users being sued. Are there any details as to how much of a song one can upload before it's illegal? Is a 2 second sound clip illegal under international laws? Exactly how do the complaints against the bittorrent users read? Has any country made it illegal simply to visit the sites? How do they gather evidence as to who is seeding what? Do European countries make the pleadings publicly assessable? If so, where would I find a copy?

Re:Bittorrent?

[Pofy]

It is the making it available to the public that is the infringement. If anyone actually buys, copies or otherwise gets his hands on it is not the issue (but can be a separate infringement in case of P2P netowrk were the downloader would be maing a copy.

Re:Bittorrent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks. The problem I see is, when people use bittorrents they are uploading at the same time they are downloading, but they are not uploading a complete work, only parts of it. Everyone seeding a torrent shares the upload as they download. So who does the **AA go after?

Re:Bittorrent?

[Pofy]

Who they go after? No idea, ask them... Seriously, I would assume like in all other cases that it is someone that they have donwloaded directly from. Now, for the question of how much of a work you have to make available for it to be an infringement? Probably depends a bit with the country and its copyright law. What would be "best" for them to do, would be to find a seeder, who has the full work available and go for him instead of someone who just has a fragment of the work.

Another question to raise is, that if they want to downlaod through bittorrent, they usually have to also upload. That would make the available work suddenly be completely legal to download since it is made available in a legal way by someone authorized by the copyright holder. Of course, they can make it so that their client never upload, only download, but that might restrict their ability to download.

They'd really prefer wax.

[Kadin2048]

Well, they'd like everyone to be on wax spools, but they'd like you to buy a new copy every few years when the old one wears out. Actually, what they'd really like is if each recording was a one-shot, somehow destroyed in the playback process. That would be just teriffic.

It's the electronics industry, not the music industry, that has driven new formats. The music industries go along with it because they make a lot of money in the short term, but they're rarely the drivers of new formats. In fact they tend to discourage their adoption more than anything else.

The music industry has been okay with the last few format transitions and hasn't fought the electronics companies too hard, because they've occured more rapidly than the old medium would have worn out. Thus, they made more money off of getting people to "buy up" to CDs than if they had waited around for vinyl records to all wear out and need replacement. Only now, they're starting to realize that they may have eaten the goose that could have laid a lot of golden eggs -- by forcing an 'upgrade' to CDs from vinyl, they made a lot of money in the short term, but they also gave people a format that doesn't wear out and is easily transferable to computers, where it can be replicated losslessly and endlessly, forever.

I'm betting they wished they had stuck with wax.

Re:They'd really prefer wax.

[Hijacked Public]

While we are being stupid about it and coming up with new metaphors to explain something we should all be able to understand without metaphors, let me propose that what 'they' would really like is to just take cash money right out of your pocket based on how much 'they' think 'they' deserve.

They being whomever.

Re:They'd really prefer wax.

[jb.hl.com]

Actually, what they'd really like is if each recording was a one-shot, somehow destroyed in the playback process. That would be just teriffic.

Most industries would love that. They would cream their pants if such a thing were possible. It's not limited to the RIAA.

Re:They'd really prefer wax.

[Anonymous Coward]

^^^^ RIAA Lackey ^^^^

Re:They'd really prefer wax.

[rock_climbing_guy]

like this company?

www.hp.com

Re:They'd really prefer wax.

[CaptainZapp]

Most industries would love that. They would cream their pants if such a thing were possible.

I'd wager that any company that tries that goes bust pretty fast due to lack of customer demand.

This is not to say that a "point-of-break" isn't designed into most products. If it breaks too fast, though, they run into bad image problems, based on pissed off customers, who most certainly buy a different brand next time. Building an image for quality is pretty hard. Wrecking it is extremely hard to recover from and is the sure path to obsolecense.

It's funny that they mention Brazil...

[cursorx]

...I searched for news, and all I could find were rewordings the IFPI press release. There was no news of an actual file sharing lawsuit. What there was, a few days ago, was a bust on a couple of guys who used Internet auction sites to sell warez. Maybe the IFPI just included those in an extremely broad definition of file sharing, to round the 8000 figure and try to frighten Brazilian file sharers.

Re:It's funny that they mention Brazil...

[cursorx]

Ok, after further research, the IFPI claims 20 Brazilians are being sued. But they don't know who they are, we're talking IP numbers. As far as Brazilian legal procedure is concerned, there's no lawsuit as of yet, maybe criminal investigations, but that's it.

Money to the musicians

[Original Replica]

If you want to support musicians forget about paying for the CD go to the concert and buy a t-shirt. " Touring is simply far more profitable than selling CDs, explains Jim Guerinot, who manages Gwen Stefani (No. 16, $23.9 million). "With CDs, you're making between fifteen and twenty-five percent royalty," he says. "On the road you get a royalty of eighty-five to ninety percent" [from ticket sales]. http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/9447993/the _richest_rock_stars_of_2006
  If the majority of music profits shift to live concerts record companies will eventually provide cheap or free downloads to promote their artist's tour.

Re:But that isn't the spirt of copyright

[vertinox]

I say, put up or shut up. If you don't like what the RIAA does, if you think labels only offer music that sucks, if DVDs are overpriced or you don't like the "new release-newer release with extras" cycle, don't respond by taking their product on your own terms.

Let me remind you of what the spirit of copyright is according to the US Constitution

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright

An author's exclusive right to his creation is mandated in the US Constitution in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, also known as the Intellectual Property Clause, which also gives Congress the power to enact statutes: To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.

I'm all for copyright and paying Authors and creators their due, but DRM violates the spirit of copyright because it has no time limitation.

If DRM expired in Author's life span + 99 years then I'm ok with it, but it technologically impossible. Therefore it violates the principal of public domain and the constitutions authors goal of seeing that authors get their due, but society and culture benefit from their works.

When you throw DRM into the equation it removes this part of the bargain. If someone violates your intellectual property... Then take them to court in accordance to the law. DRM simply takes the law and culture into their own hands and give nothing back to society.

This is the real problem with DRM.

All we can do now is hope our ancestors can legally and have the technical means to remove copyrights in a century or two with public domain works.

On a side note, DRM also restricts independent artists and authors who are locked out of certain medium devices without being having their material approved by some central source. Luckily, most devices today still allow content creation using non-signed material.

Otherwise, we'd have centralized groups telling who is going to get their DRM certificate and who is denied based on if their content is approved or not.

against phonography

[Anonymous Coward]

we should all stand together against this phonography.

yes, I know drm is really just an attempt at reverting back to an analog-like business model.

this new internet printing press is threatening them.

Second Best!

[Mateo_LeFou]

Fuckshoes!

(feeble coattail-ridiing attempt. Or is F word + footwear a patented method/concept/algorithm?

Re:Second Best!

[internewt]

(feeble coattail-ridiing attempt. Or is F word + footwear a patented method/concept/algorithm?

Fucknose.

Because they'd never engage in hypocrisy.

[Kadin2048]

So basically, if I'm a major-label corporate band, all I have to do in order to get street cred is to write a song making fun of the music industry?

That's brilliant.

Re:Because they'd never engage in hypocrisy.

[homer_ca]

That's for everybody to decide for themselves. At this point, the record labels obviously feel that the commercial value of an edgy, anti-establishment act outweighs the propaganda value of a few anti-music industry songs. It's up to us to change that equation.

Subconscious plagiarism?

[tepples]

Or make your own music. That's the best of all.

George Harrison and Michael Bolton tried this but still got sued and lost. See Bright Tunes Music v. Harrisongs Music and Three Boys Music v. Michael Bolton. What the cases had in common was that the defendants had subconsciously plagiarized an existing copyrighted musical work. In fact, is it even possible not to?

If it's still theirs

[Anonymous Coward]

then why are we paying for it?
Just because britney wants to be paid, why do I have to pay extra for DRM on CDs? Because Fox wants to advertise, why do I pay for a DVD and have to watch the ads? why do I have to pay for CSS or Safedisk or any other form of coercion WHEN I DON'T PIRATE?

When activation came out, it cost MS more and the price refelcted that. But Activation should have reduced piracy levels and since incremental cost is practically nil, all that extra money from reformed pirates should have allowed the cost to be reduced, yes? Well why wasn't it?

CD duplication costs and the cost of studio equipment has fallen DRAMATICALLY. Why is that not reflected in the cost of CDs?

CDs don't break often, so why is there breakages loss?

digital files don't break AT ALL (and if one does, I'm supposed to buy another one) so why are there breakages loss?

Legal Alternatives

[k33l0r]

"In each of the 17 countries involved in today's actions there are legal music services available to consumers. There is no excuse."

How 'bout providing some legal alternatives that HAVEN"T been crippled with the infestation known as DRM (I call it the Devil's Recording Medium)

This I CAN agree with:
"Critics of the IFPI's policy argue that the music industry is targetting its natural audience and that the real causes of CD sales declining are DVD sales, computer games sales and pricing."

Another reason I can think of is DRM itself (Sony BMG anybody?)... AND the lawsuits. Would you be willing to buy products from a company that is suing you and your friends?

Re:Legal Alternatives

[xtracto]

How 'bout providing some legal alternatives that HAVEN"T been crippled with the infestation known as DRM (I call it the Devil's Recording Medium)

Well, I do not know about your country but in Mexico, one of the legal alternatives is allofmp3.com

And yes, I have asked a Mexican lawyer (while having lunch) and it is legal to do it. Now, one thing I found interesting in the article is the Internet cafes issue. How are they suppose to get the "criminals" that share in a internet cafe? Are they going to sue the owners of the cafe? because one buy run emule from its usb and downloaded/shared music? You know, in Mexico Internet Cafe is the most prevalent way that teens (from 12 to even more than 25) get into internet. Mostly because it is very cheap and broadband is still very, VERY expensive (for the standard earning).

Secondly, they have not been able to shut down the blatant piracy that takes place in the CENTRE of Mexico City where people SELL illegally copied software, music and others for US$2 a disc (or $5 a DVD).

Thirdly, it is going to be interesting what is the extortion price they ask in Mexico. From the previous lawsuits I have read in USA, the RIAA has asked among $3,000. A lot of people cant afford that here. I am sure they will offer a less expensive extortion payment.

Except they don't really care.

[Kadin2048]

Therefore a company working to prevent piracy is spending money on a venture that is not profitable for them in the end

Actually I think that the MPAA and RIAA are very profitable, it's just that you have their ultimate goals wrong. They exist to make money, and to this end they need to appear to try to prevent piracy, and thus take in cash from various record companies in exchange for this "service." Whether or not they actually do anything is immaterial; if they happen to be effective it's just because they think that doing so will make them seem like a better investment to their benefactors. That's why you see the lawsuits and all the advertising. It's all about demonstrating to the people paying the bills where their money is going.

The fact that they're fighting a losing war doesn't really matter, because they're making money in the process. Actually, losing wars are some of the most profitable, because you can convince desperate people to pour the most resources into them.

Same here.

[kinglink]

I stopped buying music for two reasons:
1. Why buy music when you only want one song on an album. Itunes has solved this (too bad I really don't care about most music any more)

2. The music I wanted was not legal to get in my country, so the only option was the import at pretty hefty expense or get what ever had been brought over no matter the quality? New American music just sucks. Especially all the pop crap.

But also I don't pirate because like I said most music is pure crap so it would be like stealing shit from a waste management facility. I might get away with it but it stinks.

Links

[Alchemar]

Now they are suing people for using the BitTorrent site. Maybe they can get a google cache for when they take it down.

No excuse

[davitf]

"In each of the 17 countries involved in today's actions there are legal music services available to consumers. There is no excuse."

Actually I can think of a few excuses:

• the music I want is not available in any legal music service in my country

• the music I want is not available in legal music services in a format I can use

• the legal music services restrict my usage of the music in ways that make it less useful to me than "illegal" downloads

• I cannot use any of the payment methods offered by the legal music services

• I want to listen to the music in its entirety to decide if it is worth buying

• I do not have enough money to buy the music I want (but intend to buy it when I do)

Some of them may be less acceptable than others, but the notion that the simple existence of a legal music service in a country means that there isn't any excuse for downloading music there is, in my opinion, extremely short-sighted.

Re:No excuse

[Ossifer]

So if you obtain it illegally, in your country, in your usable, useful format, find it worth buying having listened to it in its entirety, do you then send the record company enough money in your preferred payment method?

Um

[Anonymous Coward]

International Federation of the Phonographic Industry

Main Entry: phonograph Pronunciation: 'fO-n&-"graf Function: noun : an instrument for reproducing sounds by means of the vibration of a stylus or needle following a spiral groove on a revolving disc or cylinder

I guess I'm fucked, I burn downloaded music to vinyl all the time.

Re:MPAA == RIAA

[zcat_NZ]

They've decided to merge into the Music And Film Industry Association of America(TM), Inc.

You must've missed the announcement back in April...

8000 ? We have BILLIONS !

[unity100]

Yea, we are BILLIONS.

For if you have not noticed, we are "the people", and you are shit.

Re:But that isn't the spirt of copyright

[beaverfever]

"I'm all for copyright and paying Authors and creators their due, but DRM violates the spirit of copyright because it has no time limitation."

If DRM needs to be fought for the sake of far-raching effects on culture and learning, then why keep feeding money to the side who are implementing DRM? Personally reject the industry and they will suffer. If they suffer then change will happen. Doing business as usual with the "other side" while vigourously opposing them on important issues is not a good way to try and bring about change. It might be the least painful in the short term, but the least productive in the long term.

desperation?

[dlim]

Perhaps the big media corporations are moving on to other countries because they're failing here in the US. It is becoming more evident that the RIAA lawsuit targeting tactics (tracking IP addresses, subpoenaing, etc) do not provide sufficient evidence for a lawsuit. Considering they've never allowed a case to go to trial, you have to wonder how much confidence they have in their methods. Of course, they have managed to extort money from all kinds of people in the US for a number of years.

So why not go somewhere else, rinse, and repeat? Or at least spread out, and file as many lawsuits as possible before there is an actual judgment that may invalidate the rest of them?

I mean, what's the other option? Give up and join the P2P users?

Re:MPAA == RIAA

[ifrag]

The acronym really could not be better... "Mafia" for the win.

Legal alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

You could always use a system like http://www.lendmonkey.com/ instead.

A positive reaction

[Ullteppe]

I just subscribed to eMusic today. This site, for those who don't know, is a major music downloading site set up by many of the biggest indie record companies. Its biggest claim to fame is that every you download is pure old MP3: No DRM at all!

Instead of bitching about DRM, let your wallet do the talking and sign up with eMusic. I found out that given how much I hate DRM, I just had to sign up with eMusic, it seems to be the best way of influencing the business. BTW, their catalog is much better than I expected. If you are not a Britney Spears fan, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised.

Re:A positive reaction

[Anonymous Coward]

Well DRM is a deal-killer for most people. We all know that. Next up on the list is the quality of tracks. If I'm going to pay to download an album, it needs to be in a lossless format such as FLAC for example. The next issue is that what you are paying for at or above the cost of a retail plastic copy, is lesser-than-CD-quality audio compressed mp3/etc. IMHO, people are morons who will pay the price of a new CD for something that is much less. I'm more of an audio-phile though, so I have some higher end sound equipment and I can notice a difference.

Just because mainstream music pissed me and so many others off... I won't buy their music period. Not that I ever bought many mainstream CDs ever. Oh add on their copy-protection attempts by violating the redbook standard and PC root-kits ala Sony. I consider them a hostile enemy because it's clear that they view their customers as such as well. Why in the hell would I pay them for the privilege?!

I still like small-time independant artists, I'll still go see live shows and buy t-shirts. Bands usually make a significant chunk from tour merchandise and live shows. So if you want to help support the artist it's better to see them live and buy their stuff at the venue while at the show.

8000? Big Whoop....

[Stanislav_J]

So, we're talking about 8K filesharers out of, what, how many MILLIONS of people worlwide use P2P services to trade music files? That's a drop in the bucket. No "AA" organization has the resources to go after ALL file swappers, or anything more than a tiny percentage of them. They just hit some of the higher profile guys, hit a few grandmas and teens at random, and then hope it will be a deterrent to the other umpteen million.

It's very much like speeding on the highway. 98% of drivers speed at least some of the time. And they do it because they know that as long as they avoid reported speed traps they probably have a 1 in 10,000 chance of getting a ticket on any given day. Maybe 1 in 100,000. Oh, the cops will periodically set up on some busy stretch of road and write a few dozen tickets and hope that acts as a deterrent. It doesn't. And neither will a handful of extortions....ERRR....lawsuits against filesharers. There are just way too many of them.

Digital File Check by IFPI

[jpop32]

Check this one out:

http://www.ifpi.org/site-content/antipiracy/digita l-file-check.html.

It's a program that 'allows the user to delete copyrighted music and video files from the "shared folders"'. How helpful. Also, it locks p2p programs with a password. Nice.

Supposedly, it doesn't phone home, but you just have to wonder...

GNUnet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that GNUnet is not mentioned, and I hear there's some good stuff on there these days too! ;)

Wrong idea

[nurb432]

To make a difference you want to boycott bands that are connected with the 'industry'. Meanwhile, you want to go out and buy lots of stuff from indie bands that are not. ( which just so happens is the better music these days, but that is not the point i was trying to make )

Just buying NO music wont do the trick.

Re:music in perspective - analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

When I want a coke, I go to the vending machine, put my money in, and out pops a coke can.

With DRM on the other hand, I put my money in the machine and out pops something containing coke, but I can't drink it cause I don't run Windows. Or it requires to know my name and email address. Something which should be simple has become hard, perhaps impossible.

Really, all I want to do is pay the money and get the product. I don't want to have to give up my rights to do it, or identify myself, or be marketed to.

boycott the bastards!

[AlgorithMan]

boycott the music industry!
listen to free creative commons music!
my favorite music site: www.garageband.com
I haven't listened to MAFIAA music ever since...

RIAA doesn't really work outside of the West

[Simonetta]

RIAA doesn't really work outside of the West. The concept just doesn't seem to catch on in places that have real poverty. The idea that people could be forced to suffer disproportional consequences from listening to musical recordings is absurd in most of the developing world.
    For instance, try telling someone in the southern regions of the former USSR that, you, as a representive of the American media conglomerates, are going to take a year's salary from them as a result of their making a cassette copy of some American pop song for their friend. They will laugh in your face. Persist and they will drag you out behind the wood shed and beat your head to a bloody pulp. Which in this case is a reasonable and responsible thing to do. Only in the West would people actually give thousands of dollars of their own money to the RIAA for making copies of musical recordings.
    Everywhere else in the world the RIAA would have to take a number and get in line with all the other criminal organizations for their opportunity to extort people's money. Seriously, they wouldn't last a month anywhere outside the USA and Europe.

Re:RIAA doesn't really work outside of the West

[mindwhip]

I still can't figure how in the USA the RIAA is legal but online gambling isn't yet it is constanly claimed that the USA is a 'free' country.

Re:Koaded message followes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

F to the U to the C to teh K to the O. F. F.

Re:But that isn't the spirt of copyright

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, that is not as easy to do as it might seem: you would need a non-insignificant portion of the purchasing population to side with you and cease purchases before you could have any discernable effect.

Given the way losses are calculated by the various industries, any significant change would be accounted for as illegal copies of whichever media is being sold. Any lobby groups that step forward and announce that they represent the people who have decided to no longer purchase any new products would be politically marginalised as - in the lexicon of the moment - communists, anti-capitalist and therefore anti-American, or the like.

Before any such movement can take place, a change in the reporting of news media would be required so that an equal voice is given to those who don't have millions to spend on marketing, lobby groups, and similar propaganda.

alternative for the musos?

[p0ss]

I am a recording artist, and 99% of my music collection is digital.

I would like to give away my music for free, i really would, but how will i survive?

I can see that free distribution leads to a larger fan base and more exposure, but if EVERYONE gets their music exclusively for free, where does my income come from?
something i really like is the barter idea, when i use p2p i can see my ratio, and as i trade my own music for someone elses songs, thats seems like a really fair trade, but how do i trade my music for electricity and a new computer?

DRM is EVIL, and i will never knowing allow it placed on my songs, but like it or not (and i dont) music is an industry, it became an industry because we ran out of kings and patrons to pay us. Who will pay us when the industry dies?

Re:alternative for the musos?

[Grand High Wonko]

I would like to give away my music for free, i really would, but how will i survive?
 
Concerts. Works for the Stones.

Always Negitive

[socalguychris]

They are always going to fight a losing battle. Think about it, "p2p is negative, it's bad, and we will sue you for it. We will make tremble"

Ever think of the small bands and not known bands that get contracts, cds, money, fans from p2p. There are many stories and bands shouldn't make all their money from cds anyways. People need to learn music is art, and real art is meant to be expressed and SHARED! Charge for a cd is fine, but 20-40 bucks for a cd that costs a few cents. Not to mention on top of that one song is good on it, and the rest are fillers, so they can have a new cd. Bands should make their money from concerts and merchandise and a little from cds.

Instead of these bands going "well we got 300,000 new fans from p2p and now have sold out concerts. But our cd sales are down by 1 mil. Let's sue those p2p bastards, for sharing our music." I understand people that sell the music, but just for downloading it, is the dumbest thing. We have all downloaded new bands we never heard of and became fans.

Just because the big boys want a 4th bmw, and 8th house, isn't a reason to take money from fans, that aren't rich.

"Yes let's punish them, they didn't buy our 20 dollar cd, but they did go to 3 of our concerts at 40 bucks and wear merchandise they bought from us"

Greed runs the world, and along side it destroys anything enjoyable. I can go over forever but there is my 5 cents.

Re:Koaded message followes ...

[Anonymous Coward]

duh umb...