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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.
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.
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!!
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
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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
No it isn't. Just becasue a folder is defined as shared does not mean you can or want to distribute music from it. The problem is that they don't define what a shared folder is. I have folders on my machine that are shared within my home network but not to the internet. So does this mean I can't place music in them? There is a BIG difference between locally shared folders and ones that are made available to the internet.
I AM A SEXY SHOELESS GOD OF WAR!!!
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.
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..