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Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Motley Fool investment Web site warns investors to beware of 'Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, Vivendi Universal, and EMI.' In an article entitled 'We're All Thieves to the RIAA,' a Motley Fool columnist, referring to the RIAA's pronouncement in early December in Atlantic v. Howell, that the copies which Mr. Howell had ripped from his CDs to MP3s in a shared files folder on his computer were 'unauthorized,' writer Alyce Lomax said 'a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.'"
They may get to the point where lawsuits are the only real income they have left. When that day comes, and all their Congressional bribe money has dried up, I think we'll see the courts and politicians finally start to hit back hard and finish them off. And they'll die still clutching their outmoded CD's, like pathetic John Henry's fighting innovation to the bitter end.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Now where have I heard that before... Oh, that's right. SCO. And look where they're at...
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
I guess the sue your customer business model isn't working out for them. Who knew?
What does that say about the GPL and various developers who have threatened to sue companies that might be violating the license?
These guys (disclaimer: I'm not one of them and in fact haven't owned any stock for over 20 years) always say that you should pick a stock with a dividends to price ratio if ten to one or better.
Microsoft, the last I heard, pays no dividends.
So I think MS is probably a "stock for fools". If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing. That's not to say that gambling that Mars won't explode in the next two weeks isn't a good bet; some gambles are worthwhile.
As to the record companies, DUH! You don't need an expert to tell you that a company whose sales have been falling for over five years is a turkey.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I wonder how they define a shared folder? I'd imagine an shared folder to them is any folder on a computer that is connected to the internet, WAN or LAN, has a CD or DVD burner in it, has any kind of magnetic removable drive, or any computer in which the hard drive can be removed.
Maybe I am buying into their crap, or maybe I'm right...who knows. But out of all the companies in the past 20 years that I have seen making huge mistakes, Microsoft is one of the few companies I have seen that is actually at least ATTEMPTING to correct their problems. They are still going about things in a very asshatish way, but I think they are realizing that they are not the invincible juggernaut that they once thought they were.
Of course, the other problem they have is that even when they do make good gestures, many in the IT industry still see them as dicks. Can't please everyone, I suppose...
Living With a Nerd
I've personally never thought - during all this suggestion from various websites - that the Music industry will ever die. In fact, I just think that the current status is a precursor to it revamping itself and embracing the digital era.
The more I read things like this though, the more it seems the downfall of such companies could actually happen. I kinda like it, too. It rumbles in my belly...
ilovegeorgebush
I doubt he'd say much.
RIAA: track record of suing their own customers, based on "evidence" gathered via pretty shady means
MS: doesn't regularly sue their own customers (their competitors, sure, but not random joe off the street)
Failure of vista: Not the only money maker that MS has. Also not their only market.
Failure of music sales: only thing the riaa has.
that means nothing because thats the purpose of the GPL :) as long as they are legitimate lawsuits of course.
FYI: I don't know what you guys are talking about half the time.
Microsoft, the last I heard, pays no dividends.
No longer true, I believe because they got sick of answering the questions you pose in your post. ;)
From http://www.microsoft.com/msft/FAQ/dividend.mspx: "Microsoft pays a quarterly dividend of $0.11 per share. Beginning in Fiscal Year 2005, Microsoft shifted from paying an annual dividend to a quarterly dividend."
So I think MS is probably a "stock for fools". If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing. That's not to say that gambling that Mars won't explode in the next two weeks isn't a good bet; some gambles are worthwhile.
As an aside, I think TMF has moved away from that sort of stance. Look at it this way - if I'm a long term invester (and it's better to be), then I don't need the dividend now. What would I do? Probably re-invest it. If I believe in the company enough to own their stock, I'd rather they didn't pay me the dividend, which I'd just re-invest, because (I think) if my investment isn't tax-protected that's actually better from a tax perspective. I don't want to be taxed on the dividends now while I'm working and presumably in a higher bracket, I'd rather be taxed on them later at the long-term cap gains rate.
"Could these be first signs of another failing "industry"?"
I'd say yes, but I think it's been dying for a long time now. More than a decade perhaps. Since the advent of mp3.com (the original - R.I.P.) and the ability for independent musicians to completely circumvent the rigors of major-label-pole-smoking. In terms of recording, production, and distribution bands have quickly adapted to the medium by which they can deliver the latest to the masses literally years faster than most major labels can. In almost all cases, faster than what a label can provide due to legal mumbo-jumbo that bands are required to go through before any thing moves forward in terms of contracts, tour support, and record sales projections and demands. Unless your 'label-made' like 99% of top 40 artists - born in the offices of label heads and marketing strategists, the wait has been over for a while now. The stone chunks are being taken out of the proverbial great wall of music put up by labels that had essentially created their disgustingly comfortable niche. It's close to being fully dismantled. For the sake of good Music, the sooner the better.
Music industry is big business. Huge in fact. It's laid many a great band to ruin in it's wake. And any thing that can crop it off at the knees is okay in my book.
I suppose they want it both ways - keep people on the edge and they're easier to control or something.
Bad comparison! John Henry was a champion for the dignity of human work. He illustrated the very real danger of big business treating individuals as disposable ever since the industrial revolution. John Henry as the RIAA? Ridiculous.
I think it is a sign of a faltering, if not failing, industry. In this case, it's a sign that the profit margins upon which the industry is built are extremely fragile and unlikely to last. I don't doubt that the music industry could be profitable selling music substantially cheaper (ie. at a rate the market would naturally bear without lawsuits), but you wouldn't get nearly as much revenue. But every lawsuit increases ill will and a desire to "stick it to the man" (with the "man" in this analogy being the record labels), causing a further decline in the price the market would naturally bear.
E pluribus unum
Ok, I'll bite. Which "good gestures" has Microsoft made that've been misinterpreted?
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
It's about time the recording industry collapsed. Maybe I'm just bitter, but last CD I bought cost $17, very little of which went to the artist. 90% of the money made in the music industry is not music sales but concerts, t-shirts, bobble-heads... you get the picture. Free the music!!
Besides, Most of these companies are big media and have more than just the record section correct? Warner, Sony, ETC.?
Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country did to you
Might be a good time to listen to a few tunes from a label that's not evil.
[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]
Microsoft is digging whatever they could find in their "Imaginary Property" port folio of patents to find something with which they could scare client who would potentially consider fleeing to open-source. They're basically trying to invent new ways to kill their adversary.
/. whereas most of the time is companies who don't really understand how they should behave to follow the GPL. Most of the time it's more a polite exchange of explanation (you should publish that piece of code...) than threats.
**AA are suing who ever they can going through complicated legal justification trying to explain why "Fair Use" never applies, trying to persuade that "Format shifting" represents "Unlawful evil piracy", etc. They're basically trying to find ways to stop everything that normally should be allowed by the law (and somewhat managed to partly achieve this goal with DMCA).
On the other hand the situation with GPL is much simplier.
The copyright law is simple : Thou shall not copy. (outside the list of exception, like personnal backups, etc. against which the **AA are fighting).
The GPL is a license : it gives additional rights, more specifically it gives you the right to freely distribute copies of GPL software, as long as you pass along the accompanying freedom to the next in the chain.
If you don't follow the license, you lose those additional rights and everything reverts to the official copyright law. Which says No-No to distributing software which you don't own personally.
They're basically making sure that the users retains their freedom by using pre-existing legal infrastructure.
You'll notice that :
- GPL isn't threatening to sue users at all. The whole "FreeSoftware" concept is about giving freedoms to users. They threaten to sue companies that would be taking away those freedoms. And in fact they don't threaten as often, as they help misguided companies who don't really understand the GPL. There are only a couple of suit-threats that we've heard here on
The end users benefits of the GPL, whereas with the former the end user is the target.
- There are no auto-settlement-bot spilling standart cease-and-desist suit-threat
- GPL isn't trying to twist the interpretation of the law to try to remove rights that where granted in the first place (They're not arguing what is "Fair Use" and trying to limit it). The GPL is based on pre-existing laws.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Actually, I wonder how their stock shares fare.
Many companies have been proclaimed dead or dying while their shares kept going up, and they keep going up still. Some portals were proclaimed to be dead because their percentage market share vaned comparing to Google, but they actually gain users as the net grows, and they actually grow and note profits each year.
So how's it for the record industry?
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
I know it's fun to burn the school down but then you're left wondering what will replace it? I know the current preference is a pay if you want/download for free if you don't business model but it isn't exactly sustainable. The problem is always people will eventually get tired of paying and stop since they don't have to pay. Look at what happened when the 55 mph speed limit was lifted. I was living in LA at the time. For the first month people drove 55 out of habit but after that they slowly increased speeds to the new 65 limit and within three months they were already back to speeding. If you made the speed limit 100 mph some people would still speed. If the groups released their albums for free but asked people to not post them for download and to please only download them from the official site there'd be a copy on a file sharing web site with in the first hour. They can try to make money off ads on their web sites but like I say the majority will probably download from file sharing sites. Eventually the professionals will give up on releasing albums and songs entirely and just go back to playing live. Odd that things might go full circle to the pre technology days. Technology created the music industry we know and it's likely to kill it in the end.
If anyone here thinks that the Fool will harm the **AA's business, think again. The Fool is only telling us what is happening. In a family gathering of more than 25 people for present opening ceremonies this year, I watched quite gleefully to find that only ONE CD or DVD had been purchased. ONLY ONE! There were cameras, books, clothes, presents galore... but only ONE lonely little DVD.
My in-laws really don't care about the **AA and their ways, CDs and DVDs are JUST TOO EXPENSIVE. Never mind the lawsuits, their crap products are priced way out of order.
Time to start ePhoenix records I think....
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
No one, including the RIAA's lawyer, has ever stated or implied or suggested that ripping your own personal copies of CDs to your computer is not a legitimate practice. The issue here is making your personal copies available for distribution on the net.
.mp3 format AND they are in his shared folder,
Here is what the RIAA's lawyer wrote in a supplemental summary judgement brief that ignited this firestorm and has been grossly misinterpreted by "pundits" on the net:
"Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed
they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs."
This is a pretty unequivocal statement. If you make your personal copies available for distribution, they are no longer your personal copies since distribution is not the purpose, right, or intention for maintaining personal copies .
Here is what the Judge wrote in granting summary judgment:
"However, the question is not whether Howell owned legitimate copies of
some of the sound recordings on CD, but instead whether he distributed copies of the
recordings without authorization. Howell's right to use for personal enjoyment copyrighted
works on CDs he purchased does not confer a right to distribute those works to others
without Plaintiffs' authorization. 17 U.S.C. 106(3). As he admitted that the sound
recordings were "being shared by [his] Kazaa account," Howell is liable for distributing them
in violation of the recording companies' exclusive right."
Take a look at Warner Music Groups stock price over the last two years (WMG is the only publicly traded music label, in the last year it has decreased by almost $20! You screwed yourself in 2007 if you sided with the RIAA. But look at the long-term, its not just the lawsuits that make music labels a bad investment now or the last five years. Its a dying industry without the lawsuits. The digital age is here, nothing can be done to stop it. There never was anything that could be done. The industry can still exist, but its market share had decreased enormously and they need to accept it. Sorry for anyone who bet the farm on these guys, cause all you have is a cow left. Not even a cash one sadly.
...and it should be known by now
What worries me is that the RIAA will talk Congress into subsidies...
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
where polotically correct in this sense is sensitivity to the dying music industry: maybe there really is no more money in this business
we all talk about "embracing new models", and anger at the industry for seeing napster and fighting them tooth and nail, rather than changing their business model. we yell at the music industry for not using the internet to their advantage... well what if the suits are right? there is no advantage in the internet. that it's simply death for them?
of course there is still money in concerts and movie theatres, those are real world venues. also advertising plugs. but everything that goes on media: movies, music, maybe there really is nothing but a black hole of no cash for the music and movie industries
not that the industries can do anything about it
and copyright of course means shit: it's simply unenforceable. you can trap a few scurrying mice here and there and extract a few pennies from soccer moms and college kids, but everyone will trade anyways, with just more and more bulletproof protocols and apps
not that i'm worried or complaining about this new world. one music exec assholes financial riches gone means our cultural riches greatly improved. there's more than one way to measure richness than just cash in the bank
it's a wonderful new world in fact
long live the death of the music and movie industries
this is really wonderful
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The RIAA doesn't sell music. They are a "trade group" representing several major record labels, ie, they are a group of lawyers providing legal services to the big-label cartel. As long as the big record labels continue to pay the RIAA to sue customers, pay off politicians, and eliminate competition, then the RIAA is giving it's customers exactly what they want.
"Knowledge is the only instrument of production that is not subject to diminishing returns" -Journal of Political Econom
Really, at this point, I purchase compact discs for one purpose: to have a real product to carry from the store and then store on a shelf. I rip all my CD's so that I may listen to the music on the device of my choice; one that holds far more information than any single or group of discs. It is getting this way with movies too. I figure that I will start ripping my movies to large storage systems and build a video-on-demand device at home. Don't get me wrong though, I do not like downloading music nor movies. Perhaps I am a relic, but I want a real 'box' product. In addition, I have hated downloading music within iTunes only to be told that I cannot make a mix mp3 CD (for my truck, which reads mp3 discs) with some of the music I just paid for the right to use. I feel the same way about movies, and to take it a step further, I feel most of my drive space is something expendable. If I lose an mp3 from a rip, I simply rip again. If I lose a download, I am SOL.
Click here or here.
Many people have umbrella policies in their home owner's insurance. I do.
Now many people who own computers and are connected to the internet are buying music
from itunes, have a home network to inter-connect more than one PC for resource sharing
among computers. And many people own iPods and rip their own CD's using iTunes, leaving
the music files on the computer. We all KNOW how secure Windows is against intruders from
the internet. It's possible that some downloaded Trojan or Virus could somehow open up
our disk files to be viewed from the internet, without our knowledge. And, it's
Microsoft's fault for not making Windows secure to this threat.
So, I'm waiting for someone who get's hauled into court to face the RIAA to talk to their
insurance company about a claim against their umbrella policy for protection, since this
was NOT of their own intentional action, but a result of insecure software / hardware that
they purchased. So, insurance company counter sues Microsoft (AND ISP provider, modem / router
maker, etc).
Just out of curiousity, what happens to all that music these companies "own" if they all go down in flames? Does it all get buried under litigation for potentially decades until our legal system can define who owns what? If so, we might well be headed back to the age of "talkies", where the only music that accompanies anything is created in the present along side the content itself.
8==8 Bones 8==8
True. I should have said "record companies" instead of the RIAA.
. . . no RIAA music for me for the last five years.
TMF employs several contributors who espouse several differnt investment approaches, and also runs many discussion boards where many investment strategies are discussed.
Many of the strategies are yield or value based, and indeed Microsoft (or any other company trading at a high P/E) would be unlikely to appear as a recommended share for HYP or value strategies.
Some strategies are growth based, which means looking at companies and analysing whether they are likely to improve profits. It is entirely feasible that MSFT would get recommended at some point by TMF followers of growth or recovery strategies. However, most growth strategies focus on small companies as these are simpler to analyse.
FWIW, I have an HYP portfolio as proposed by TMFPyad on the Fool UK site.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
A 10-1 price to dividend means it has a 10% yield. That's junk bond territory. I own high yield funds and preferred stocks that pay in the 7-10% range, but that's for monthly income; growth is pretty much non-existant. Not exactly MF territory.
PS - MSFT does pay a dividend.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I've got to say it - the big labels really are at the point of deserving a Darwin Award at this point in time. They couldn't do a better job of committing suicide if they tried. Actually, I'd be amazed that if they had any good will left at all.
Each of the mistakes they have made is a killer:
1. Alienating their own creative talent. Copyright exists for a reason, and it isn't what the RIAA would have you believe it is - it's there to protect creative artists from the sort of treatment that the RIAA labels give the recording artists. So, it's now well known that if you sign a deal with one of these labels, they'll shaft you. Now that there are inexpensive alternatives, what do the recording artists need the labels for, anyway?
(For the record, the most important role copyright serves is to provide a legal framework for the interaction between creative artists and those who publish or distribute their work. It's thanks to copyright that a creative artist can submit their work to somebody who can market it properly, without having to worry about that work being stolen by the distributer. The end user, regardless of what the RIAA may say about it, has very little do to with the purpose of copyright.)
Easy solution: STOP SHAFTING THE ARTISTS. In fact, recording artists DO need record labels, as a corporation like a label has the assets to get music out and publicized in a way that a single recording artist could never do on their own. If the recording artists were just treated fairly, instead of being driven into debt while their CD sales make millions, then the record labels would have no difficulty retaining artistic talent.
2. Trying to wipe out new markets. Forget inability to innovate, Napster was a debacle. While it is wrong to pirate music, Napster was a huge opportunity. Imagine it for a minute - an entire community of early adapters, moving all sorts of music around on their own, and most of them people who would buy CDs, as at the time the file format wasn't as high fidelity as a CD. So, what do the labels do? Crush it.
Easy solution: take over the market. How can you get cheaper advertising than Napster? Flood it with high-quality samples for each of your albums, and watch the sales soar. That's the point of a music video, isn't it? Advertising? And these guys will do all of this for you for free! If the labels had adapted Napster instead of trying to crush it, they would have made record amounts of sales in those years.
3. This has to be one of the stupidest moves I've ever seen - starting a legal campaign against their own markets. And, they began it by impersonating police officers. So, now their own customers view them as a bunch of thugs. Then, they go after the students in the universities, which is where their future lifetime customers would be found, and sue them - or try to extort money.
Very easy solution: Stop going after the insignificant filesharers, and actual concentrate on pirates! If you're going to launch a lawsuit, go after somebody who is pressing copies of your CDs and selling them without the rights to, not some guy on a bit torrent. DON'T SUE YOUR OWN CUSTOMERS!
So, in three steps, they've alienated their talent, their distribution streams, and their customers. Who is left?
When these record labels fall, it will be their own fault. There is plenty of space for them, and they certainly could have had a profitable role in the music scene today. But to act with this much stupidity, and then be surprised when the market rejects them, is Darwin Award-worthy material.
The big problem, though, is that they could take copyright down with them, and that would be a very big problem for the rest of the artistic field. The labels may be abusive thugs when it comes to copyright protections, but the rest of us - writers, publishers, artists, etc., do need copyright intact in order to operate, and the image that the labels are creating of what copyright is in both letter and spirit is extremely misleading. The ill will they're spreading could bring the rest of us down.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
that is less susceptible to market forces.
i've always wondered why the artists don't just get up and leave... but then after doing some googling, and reading of the standard contracts most artists sign, it seems like the reason they aren't leaving is simply because they can't.
http://www.futureofmusic.org/contractcrit.cfm
The labels basically own all rights to the artist's music, name, likeness, etc... they basically own everything about the artist short of their soul, and are free to exploit it as they see fit.
and things don't stop there... if the artist chooses to leave, then all their works stay with and belong to the label for a period of effectively forever. And you will not receive royalties either, letting the label keep every penny.
So if artists leave, they'll be screwed. If artists stay, they'll continue to be screwed, just not as badly. And there's nothing an artist can do about it, because once signed, nothing short of the top 1% of artists can negotiate out of it.
So Vista was an "attempt" to fix XP and the Firewall from hell was an "attempt" to secure the OS? Since Service Pack 2 on XP every time I install a component or piece of software Microsoft rebricks my computer. As near as I can tell they're approach to security is deny all actions then you don't have to worry about plugging holes. Sorry but kiss the puppy it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that deep down Microsoft are a bunch of white hat softies. Microsoft has been a bully for a long time and being a bully makes you paranoid. Even with profits going up every year they still see all the competitors as talking food from their mouths. They'd try to run Apple out of the computer business but remember Apple was their shining example of why they weren't a monopoly. They see Apple as the devil they have to live with they just don't want them to gain market share. If they openly attack Apple they risk another court judgement, not that the last one had any affect. Instead they chip away making things not quite compatible and play dumb. All Microsoft is "attempting" to do is line their pockets. So are most companies Microsoft just tends to be more anticompetitive than most.
Qualified dividends (more or less all dividends if you're a long term investor) are taxed at a 15% rate. The LTCG rate will increase to 20% in 2011 (most likely sooner and higher if a democrat is President).
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
AC/DC recently hit the 22 million mark on "Back in Black", so I refuse to believe that albums won't sell. I do, however, believe that crappy albums will no longer sell, and that you can no longer trick people into buying a crappy album (or endorsing the band behind it) with one over-produced song.
stuff |
They have a 20 year old notion of how much a "unit" they need to make. This notion is ludicrous given the tech advances we have. They failed to keep dropping prices for their disks when they could. Instead of using the volume sales concept, they stubbornly stuck to making dollars profits on cents worth of plastic and paper. They just don't get it that price gouging doesn't work. The ultimate decision makers in that industry who decide pricing levels are *all millionaires*, they just can't relate to what stuff costs anymore for people who are not. And the legislators they "consult" with, similar. they live and work in an extremely expensive part of the US, DC, and none of them can be considered "working class" in the traditional sense. In short, the pair of them that try to set pricing and laws when it comes to IP and tech advances mean for tangibles cost just can't see the forest for the trees, they have no practical frame of reference. And even with "market studies", those can be flawed as well, and the ultimate proof of "market studies" is whether or not your widget you sell sells with full customer satisfaction or not, and in this case, they fail it, so even their marketing studies are therefore flawed by empirical evidence. We can all see it, right there in plain sight. If they weren't, we wouldn't be seeing these articles all the time or be discussing copies and copyright and so on. They just can't handle the innovation and ramifications of replicator technology so far, even though we are still in the tiny opening phases of such tech. That means as we get closer to cheap tangibles replication for the "masses" guy, star trek level tech, headed that way, they will continue to screw up, using their concept of enforced luddism by "law" as a business model. It is not only just plain ignorant and stupid, it is harmful to the over all economy and for society in general.
It is no wonder you haven't owned stock in 20 years--you don't know what you are talking about.
First, MSFT does pay a dividend. Second, the Fools have changed their favored stock screener many times. Today it is something called CAPS, not "dividend price ratio," whatever that is. Third, dividends most certainly are NOT the only way to make money in stocks without "gambling." Dividends can be cut, book values, revenues, and expenses can rise and fall, ALL of these things affect the value of a company. A stock with a Price/Book of less than 1 is would make you money if it paid no dividend.
All investments involve risks. Unless your mind considers the word "investment" to be synonymous with "gamble" then you can't fairly say stocks without dividends are just gambling.
One more thing: Today, The Motley Fool has degenerated into nothing but a stock-spam company. They send several emails per week with subjects such as "this investment has a guaranteed 4000% return!" and "buy this before the market crashes!" I wouldn't take any investing advice from fools who peddle hyperbolic junk mail like that.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
" If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing. "
That's nonsense. If you buy a with a reasonable expectation of continued growth, it's an investment like any other equity purchase. If you put your money in without any research, then it's gambling, whether the company pays a dividend or not.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
That example, in particular, brought Yoda to mind:
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try.'"
If they were serious, they'd make compliance with standards a priority, rather than bribing to make their implementation a standard.
Don't tell me to get a life. I'm a gamer; I have LOTS of lives!
The music industry does have one advantage that tobacco doesn't - the RIAA has a sizeable menagerie of pet congresscritters on both sides of the aisle (e.g. their lead lapdog, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah)).
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
And $50 says that one DVD came from the bargain bin at Wal-Mart for $5!
Yeah, this is the first Christmas I remember that no-one in my family gave or received a CD. I did get concert tickets, though...
The RIAA is acting on behalf of its customers to sue its customers' customers. You can try to nit-pick with technicalities all you want, but the plain and simple fact of the matter is that big recording labels (via their PAID representatives, the RIAA) are suing their own customers.
I suspect musicians will go the same route. Songs will be given away as free advertising, and they'll make their money by booking performances and concerts (and selling memorabilia at such). For all practical purposes that's the way most of the RIAA-contracted musicians work anyway right now, since the studios keep 95% to over 100% (the band owes them money) of all the proceeds from song sales.
Sorry to burst your bubble, but Microsoft does pay a dividend. In fact, several years ago, they also paid a special dividend of $3/share to unload parts of the $40 billion hoard that people were criticizing them for keeping.
And by the same time, MS brings OOXML to the table.
If they want to become nice, they need to do that in a consistent way.
Rethinking email
"Like the movies and tv shows and games they enjoy today will still be made if no one ever pays for them."
that's a colossal statement of your stupidity
they made music in the time of mozart you know. how many cds were around then?
and how much does it cost someone actually produce an album nowadays? hint: it's around the price of a laptop, because THAT'S ALL YOU NEED NOWADAYS
likewise, the golden age of movies occured when there were no dvds or vcrs (something which the movie industry fought tooth and nail, because it was going to kill their business... and now represents a huge cash cow for them... whu!?)
hmmm... making money off of pirates of the caribbean might involve theatres... theatres that continue to fill seats even though everyone has a television set (which people said were going to kill movies in the 1950s btw)
but of course, movie theatres are going to be dead because everyone wants to look at a crappy copy on their 17 inch monitor in their parents basement by themselves
pffffffffft
you sir, are an idiot
you don't understand your subject matter
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
They used to be a good source, tho?
Where would you recommend that a person go now for the kind of good insight and learning tools that MF used to be?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
...which ordinary folk use to pirate copyrighted music and movies. By far, Windows is that tool which facilitates and enables the piracy since it was made to play, store and share digital multimedia files in its very core design and make it so simple that any average joe can do it.
MS has very deep pockets too, and up till now has been either a sacred cow that nobody dares stick a knife in, or a sleeping 900 pound gorilla that nobody dares wake up, or both. But the times are getting dangerous, and the **AA are getting desparate so who knows what will happen.
You might want to add that swapping software was the industry norm at the time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Given that the RIAA has not sued anyone who has just ripped their CDs and uploaded to their iPods, I would suggest that your comment is erroneous.
Why did the previous comment get modded down to 1 instead of the 2 my comments usually start at? All without any kind of moderation attributed to it, not even an 'overrated' or 'offtopic' Hehe, I think I pissed off Slashdot's resident right wing assclown Pudge the other day.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
sorry guys, but if i had a nickel for every prediction the motley fool has made I'd be richer than they are.
Hesitate to explain this, but....
Every windows computer is sharing everything, unless specifically disabled to NOT do so. Does the standard consumer understand this? No... Is it even instructed... NO. Does MS want you to remove the administrative shares? NO...
Every computer by default, first install... C$ is open and available. Its a share.
I strongly believe the RIAA lawyers have run out of ground to stand on.
They're hurt and desperately striking out at anything, in hopes of somehow surviving.
That day has even passed. RIAA is like a starving rat with its leg caught in a trap. It isn't trying to strike out at anything anymore; it is trying to gnaw off its own limb (ie. the paying customers it once appreciated long ago) to escape.
They've relied on the creation and maintenance of an artificial business model and marketplace for a long time now, and it has required more and more draconian laws to keep it workable as technology advances (starting with the "Mickey Mouse laws" extending terms of copyright beyond the human lifespan, trying to make the record button on VCRs illegal, and culminating with the successful passing of the DMCA). They're running out of options now, because going much further would either violate constitutional rights or cause undue harm to consumers and other industries.
It's interesting that people are still surprised that RIAA believes it is stealing even to rip legally purchased music onto a computer purely for your own enjoyment. RIAA and its counterparts around the world have never been fans of fair-dealing provisions in copyright law and have done their best to contain such rights at the WIPO level. The RIAA objections go even further than copying paid-for music to PCs or making MP3 CD Mixes to play in your car stereo (I find keeping 6 CDs full of MP3s in my car stereo extremely handy). A few years ago I heard what CRIA (the Canadian counterpart to RIAA) thought not only about what constitutes fair-dealing in terms of making personal copies, but what should count as "public exhibition". According to the CRIA representatinve on this radio interview:
* Public exhibition doesn't mean you've charged admission for the purpose of consuming the content (listening to music, watching movies, etc). Basically it means (to CRIA) ANY BROADCAST outside the personal domicile of the purchaser, or to consumers who to not reside at the point of broadcast. For example, if you invite your neighbours over for the Grey Cup final, or play the radio through your truck's speakers at a tailgate party at the stadium it is a "public exhibition". If you are working out in the yard and enjoy having music to listen to better but on earphones because if you use speakers that others can hear you are engaging in public exhibition.
* This CRIA representative advocated extra fees for any sort of "public exhibition", including non-commercial cases as stated above. For consumers in Canada that would generally mean new levees on any device capable of playing media to more than one person (presently levees are paid on recordable media and devices capable of duplicating content only--iPods are taxed, but read-only CD players are not taxed the same way).
* The CRIA representative counted COMMERCIAL public exhibition as ANY BUSINESS THAT EXHIBITS CONTENT THAT CAN BE VIEWED OR HEARD BY ITS CUSTOMERS, and figured that it justified paying more for the right to use the content (ie. the same higher amounts movie rental stores might pay for a license allowing them to rent out DVDs, or what sports pubs pay to show pay-per-view sporting events, or what DJs are SUPPOSED to pay for their music). This includes the delis and Chinese buffets and such that show television broadcasts viewable by diners, dentists offices that play radio stations in their waiting rooms and taxi drivers who leave their radio on when they have a fare. These are specific examples the CRIA representative gave in the interview where they'd like to see more enforcement of "public exhibition" rights restriction.
* The CRIA representative also accused schools and libraries of "being poor role models" by allowing copyright violations to go un-checked. The CRIA wanted to crack down on "excessive duplicating" for example, and believed that an extensive "education campaign" should be rolled out at these institutions to make our children aware that "violating copyright law is like stealing". He gave the suggestion that
A publicity stunt in which they told everyone ahead of time how long it was going to be available in that way, and when they were going to close their doors to it. A stunt in which they grossed more in one day than they could all year going on tours and reselling merchandise.
:)
Yeah it was a stunt alright. And now they understand full well how much money they could earn just by doing what's right for them.
As for piracy killing the market and business... No. Piracy only accounts for about 20-30% sales loss, and its always been present, in all shapes, forms, and is an age old issue all persons have had to deal with throughout history. Technology has accelerated it, but it didn't make it worse.
The problem is that the industry didn't keep up with technology. End of line. They failed to grow with the rest of the world, and now they either find a way to grow rapidly and regain the edge, or it fades away and is replaced with another group that will basically do their old jobs better and more refined.
Its the way of life.
Now stop posting as an anonymous coward, RIAA Rep
If it was just Slashdotters that were no longer buying CDs, the RIAA wouldn't be so panicked. It's all the college students that can install a BitTorrent (or whatever) client and download music. It's all the people that buy music downloads from non-RIAA artists. It's even the legal download services that legally sell RIAA music, because the RIAA mindset still hasn't fully adopted that market strategy (hence DRM).
We are the 198 proof..
Then please define and explain how it can be legal but not authorized? If its legal for me to do it, I don't care if you authorize it or not.
Translation: "Get buggered, buyer; get fucked, customer."
A new motto which might suit the RIAA/MPAA.
[Actually adapted from an admonition of Priapus, the biggest dick among the Roman gods]
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
the movie industry needs dvd income in order to survive?
oh great genius: how did they ever make massively expensive movies when there was only movie theatres?
i await your divine wisdom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
to go short of the stock. If this is truly a dying industry, you can profit from it in that way.
I'd be willing to put money on the bulk of "piracy" being downloads of long out-of-print music and not just on the current offerings from the record labels.
I hear all the time about people finding rare songs or whole albums online and how great it was that SOMEONE out there encoded it and shared it. The labels refuse to do it, so how else is anyone going to get it? If it's not being offered in the stores or online for purchase, the only alternative is to scour Ebay or second hand shops for that music. The RIAA doesn't see a dime of second hand purchases, so why should it care if someone d/l'ed that song or album that they're not selling anyways? There's lots of old hip hop, funk, and soul that are out of print that I'd love to hear again, but according to the RIAA, I'd be engaging in a criminal act if I seek it out and download it from some p2p network. In some cases it's the only way to hear that music, so what am I supposed to do?
Fifty watts per channel, baby cakes.
If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing.
Stock growth and dividends are both perfectly acceptable forms of investment appreciation, and they both have a solid basis in reality (ie tangible wealth).
If a company has money they don't have anything better to do with, they can return it to investors in a dividend. That's cash in your pocket - it doesn't get more tangible than that.
Stock price growth is a little more nebulous, but it is fundamentally based in reality (even if it is subject to bubbles/speculation/etc). Here's an analogy:
I start a company and take it public from day 1. Based on my reputation alone I sell 10M shares for $10 each. Those shares at that moment in time have a book value of $10 each - as the company holds $100M in cash, and in the event the company is dissolved that gets split amongst the shareholders (minus obvious inefficiencies like lawyer bills/etc).
Now, I buy a factory and raw materials and make some products and sell them. I spend $50M and in a year I make back $150M. Now I have maybe $30M in tangible assets, and about $200M in cash. I could spend $100M and give all the shareholders $10 each in dividends. However, even if I don't the book price of the company is about $24/share - so that part of the stock price is 100% backed by assets. In fact, if I do give out a $10 dividend the book price of the stock falls instantly by that $10.
Dividends really just give back to stockholders money they already own - just in a different form. An ideal company wouldn't pay any dividends since it could probably make better use of the money itself - and stockholders would get the same value from their appreciating shares. The dividend can actually be a cost to sharedholders, since it FORCES them to realize a gain that they might have wanted to defer and which they could have deferred if the money went back into the company.
Dividends really ought to be used only for money that companies don't have a better use for. However, it seems like they've become more of a symbol of blue-chip stability and so companies pay them - even if they could use the cash themselves.
DVDs are expensive? I get them for $5 out of the bin at Wal-Mart, don't know about you but I find that to be a fair price. Better yet is that I can get old Andy Griffith episodes for like $1 for 8.
DVDs are cheap unless you need to get the latest just-released movie.
Do you have ESP?
Microsoft, for what it's worth, has a P/E of 23.10 when I just checked. It might be overvalued, but it's hard to say. Perhaps the investors feel it's undervalued and that Vista just hasn't taken off yet (I know, I'm laughing just writing that)... who knows?
"When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." - Richard M. Nixon
i somehow seem to understand the world better than you
moron: how much does it cost to make and distribute a song, worldwide, nowadays?
oh, somewhere around NOTHING
i leave it to your exalted genius to realize the real driving force behind the collapse of copyright: no economic model behind it to prop it up
and i reserve my contempt for you, whose mind seems to be 15 years behind the technology
yours in derision
xoxoxoxoxoxox
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Bullshit. I said cooperation is voluntary, meaning we don't have to cooperate with non-cooperators. You want the power to economically oppress people, well we aren't going to let you own slaves, sorry.
Cooperation and consent don't exist in a free market where a small oligarchy controls all the resources. Capitalism invariably leads to empire building, read some history. The free market is an unbalanced system with no checks and balances and a bunch or runaway feedback loops. Once again, we you libertarians offer simple solutions to complex problems that just don't pan out in the real world. You see, we tried lassez faire, and it failed miserably, leading to robber barons, 7 day work weeks, rampant poverty, dangerous working conditions, and pollution. You know what saved us? Wasn't the free market, bub, it was people organizing together voluntarily to protect their interests against fat-cat would be slave owners like you, you oppressive little elitist git.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
if I'm a long term invester (and it's better to be), then I don't need the dividend now. What would I do? Probably re-invest it. If I believe in the company enough to own their stock, I'd rather they didn't pay me the dividend, which I'd just re-invest, because (I think) if my investment isn't tax-protected that's actually better from a tax perspective.
That's one of the many things wrong with our tax system. IMO, forst of all dividensds and Capital Gains should be taxed as income, at the same rate as if you were working for a living at some shitty job.
Second, if you reinvest your dividends they shouldn't be taxed.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
This is going to be what kills them. In the late 80s through the mid 90s they signed a lot of people from the punk and hip hop world without understand a thing about who they were. There are some people it's just not smart to screw over because they will make your life a living hell. I'm willing to bet Chuck D is such a person.
According to the definitive Johnny Cash version of the song, John Henry did have the skills -- he could do anything you asked him to, short of a college education. What the "he was a dinosaur idiot" people on this thread are proposing is that a poverty-stricken Black child laborer in the mid-1800s should have walked over to the college and spent four years becoming a mechanical engineer so he could then go on to work on steam shovels.
Do I even have to point out this was not exactly an option?
John Henry was a man who took every opportunity and did everything he could to save his family until his heart literally burst. The arguments against him basically amount to telling a poker player, "Well, you should have made sure you got yourself dealt a Royal Flush on the first try..."
Careful what we say guys, 'cause if there's a Heaven, and we make it, we'll all end up working for the likes of John Henry....
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
It does not matter what the source is or what format we have it in. We are purchasing a license to listen at our leisure to a song or watch a movie. We can have a thousand copies because we can only listen to one at a time. Somebody needs to argue this in court. That we are in fact purchasing a license to listen, not a piece of plastic or a digital file of zero's and ones.
This is the legal justification for open downloads of music:
In fact the record labels need to, I think legally provide, free downloads of music. The record companies have not provided a way for me to enjoy my license to listen if the CD gets scratched, as it is now they force us to buy a new license they should probably reimburse anyone who has had to buy more than one license because of damage media. I noticed about 10 years ago CDs became very easy to scratch not the bottom but the top.
Because the carrier medium can be damaged we should all be able to get a download of a new instance of the song we paid for from the Internet if we purchased the license to listen to it. Since the record companies have not provided a way for us to get a replacement copy the Internet downloads can ethically be justified. Truth is we don't need the record companies anymore. We can all buy from the artists direct and vote with a link what is most popular. I would be happy to pay the creative talent directly without the huge middle man cut. Another things is corporate pressure to maintain the status quo system cannot be put on artists by large corporations.
Hopefully someone will get this into the hands of the attorneys for the defendants. and talk the idea up The record companies have failed to provide a mechanism to execute our license to listen if the media is damaged. This is the justification for internet downloads. Technically based on quantum physics there is only one copy of a piece of music in the universe. This exists in the intangible realm; all tangible manifestations of this one copy are simply a physical conveyance of this one real instance. It is an information universe, everything is ultimately just information. Check out http://iamblogging.net/ for more if you like this type of thought.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
So I think MS is probably a "stock for fools".
Of course it is. The stock has underperformed the market for the better part of a decade. From an investment point of view, Microsoft has tanked steadily since 2000.
and their contracts prove it.
I never got into it because it seemed that it should be illegal for me to create a song and end up having to pay somebody to negotiate a price that I'd have to pay to play it.
And then again maybe not. (If I really pissed off some record exec, [very much my personal style,] he'd only have to say no and I couldn't play it.)
Record companies have been broken for years and it took the internet to show us all just how broken they were.
They're going kicking and screaming into the dust bin and its good riddance to bad rubbish.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Porche every year for all of your record execs, (like you have 1 versus their 100) you can actually undercut the majors, and that'll just totally piss them off. :-)
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
and the distribution is only a download away, the artists (like Lyle Lovett, like the Futuristic Sex Robots, like ...) why go with brick and mortar at all?
Music has a very long-tail in the digital age.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
RIAA says, Copying CDs... transferring a copy onto your computer hard drive or your portable music player, won't usually raise concerns so long as:
* The copy is made from an authorized original CD that you legitimately own
* The copy is just for your personal use.
They themselves say you can do it, and they're now going after people who do this? Any judge who reads this should throw out any such personal use cases since the RIAA themselves are essentially giving legal advice and stating is it ok to do so.
Out of print music should be freely transferable.
;-)
Does anyone else remember 'Snoopy vs the Red Baron' by 'The Royal Guardsmen'? I was a little kid and loved that song when it came out but I doubt the RIAA would consider it profitable to re-release it. I'm sure they would consider it profitable to sue me for copying it though.
Push the button, Max!
Beckerman states in his prior summary "it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"
However, the full wording of the text is (I've bolded the parts Beckerman ommitted):
.mp3 format for his and his wife's use. (Howell Dep. 107:24 to 110:2; 114:1 to 116:16). The .mp3 format is a "compressed format [that] allows for rapid transmission of digital audio files from one computer to another by electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol." Napster, 239 F.3d at 1011. Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs. Moreover, Defendant had no authorization to distribute Plaintiffs' copyrighted recordings from his KaZaA shared folder.
It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies of Plaintiffs' copyrighted sound recordings on his computer. Exhibit B to Plaintiffs' Complaint is a series of screen shots showing the sound recording and other files found in the KaZaA shared folder on Defendant's computer on January 30, 2006. (SOF, Doc. No. 31, at 4-6); Exhibit 12 to SOF at 13, 17-18.) Virtually all of the sound recordings on Exhibit B are in the ".mp3" format. (Exhibit 10 to SOF, showing virtually all audio files with the ".mp3" extension.) Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the
Each of the 11 sound recordings on Exhibit A to Plaintiffs' Complaint were stored in the .mp3 format in the shared folder on Defendant's computer hard drive, and each of these eleven files were actually disseminated from Defendant's computer. (See Jacobson Decl. 6 and Exhibit 1 thereto.) Each of these actual, unauthorized disseminations of Plaintiffs' copyrighted works violates Plaintiffs' exclusive distribution right under the Copyright Act.
Do you see how much Beckerman leaves out?? Becker is completely spreading FUD about this and now other news outlets are picking up his characterization - see, e.g., Dvorak's latest rant. I am not taking a stance on what the RIAA thinks is legal or not, but the simple fact is that Beckerman is completely misconstruing what the brief says to suit his agenda.
He also claims that the judge simple asked "Did they make unauthorized copies?" but that's NOT what the judge asked at all according to the RIAA's brief. The question they state was: "Does the record in this case show that Defendant Howell possessed an "unlawful copy" of the Plaintiff's copyrighted material, and that he actually disseminated that copy to the public?" and that is the question they are answering.
I'd be surprised if they blatantly misstated the Order, but Mr. Beckerman hasn't provided us with a link to the original order (and no, I'm not about to go snooping around on PACER to prove my point) so we can't be sure what was on it.
Sorry, but I have watched Mr.-might-as-well-be-Stallman-with-his-fanaticism Berckerman's story spiral well past the safety of slashdot's borders and it's time to rein Beckerman in.
-p-
The emacs religion: to be saved, control excess.
The music industry is dead as disco.
Don't throw good money after bad.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Just for starters, and I am not even a pop music listener....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I've got 3.5 GB in "My Music", 95% of it .aac files of CDs I own ripped via iTunes. I've copied it to my Buffalo Linkstation NAS, but I can't access it all while away from home or with friends (I listen to a subset off my cellphone's 2GB SD card). The obvious solution is to give the NAS a static IP and put an HTTP server on it.
;-)
I believe that's a substantial non-infringing use of a shared folder. And it allows distribution to anyone who discovers (or to whom I disclose) its URL. But why should I care if others break the law accessing my files? The only downside to me is if strangers over-consume my resources and ISP bandwidth.
1. Has the MafIAA ever gone after someone for having a shared folder? I'm not talking about P2P networks, just a network-accessible folder containing copyrighted material.
2. Surely there are lots of Slashdot geeks who have such a set up already, how's it working out for you? Can you sleep at night? Did you put a password on the folder? Can you give me its URL?
=S
Quantity is not everything, especially when it comes to music; you have to consider who's leaving. Last year was interesting: Radiohead, nine inch nails, Madonna, Paul McCartney. Major influences in different genres, all left their labels. When people who have been in the industry for a long time decide to leave, I think it sends a message to the newcomers. True, they made their career with the old scheme of the record labels but the important thing is they have experience and they're going into a new business model, uncharted territory, same as a new band, only they know what they don't want, so following closely what they do next might give everyone (new bands, as well as well established bands and artists) some ideas on how to make money as a band without the record labels.
Go hug some trees.