Slashdot Mirror
A Look at The RIAA's War Against College Students
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "p2pnet.net has put together a fascinating retrospective on the RIAA's war against college students, commenced February 28, 2007. The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy — corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' In a scathing indictment not only of the major record labels, but of those schools, administrators, and educators who have yet to take a stand against it, Jon Newton reviews a number of landmark moments in the 11-month old 'reign of terror'. They include the announcement of the bizarre 'early settlement' sale, the sudden withdrawal of a case in which a 17 year old Texas high school student had been subpoenaed while in class during school hours to attend a deposition the very next day during his taking of a standardized test, the call by Harvard law professors for the university to fight back when and if attacked, and the differing reactions by other schools."
when will common sense prevail?
when will the courts realize that big business is assaulting citizens.
why can't anonymous declare war on the RIAA, they are a far bigger threat to society than Scientology.
"steal, steal, give it to all your friends, and steal some more...they're ripping people off and its not right" - Trent Reznor
http://youtube.com/watch?v=TJ5iHaV0dP4
-I only code in BASIC.-
More and more, corporate America has been ready and willing to screw over the "consumer" in order to make more money. The media industry's stranglehold on their particular market is a stockholder's dream come true.
As long as people are willing to shell out the $$ for the crap they keep shoveling out, not much is going to change.
So it seems like the controversy if the rights to the TV series may actually be a facade that's used to avoid citizens to be too well-informed about the dark future that lies ahead.
If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker would destroy civilization.
A large predatory animal can be quite dangerous once wounded (by lack of CD sales) and will attack anything
Its not the years, its the mileage
"The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call their formulaic outpourings.' "
If it's really crap like you say, is it really worth listening to at all? Why even download it "for free" if you think it's crap? It just sounds like a sad excuse to download. There are alternatives to "Big 4" music, unfortunately, sometimes the anti-RIAA crowds neglect to mention them.
The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it. As you will not be infringing on anyone's copyright, you will not get sued.
If the content is good enough that you want access to it, you either have to pay for it, or accept a small but nonzero chance of being sued and fined for copyright infringement.
I also don't see that universities need to cover for students engaging in copyright infringement. If you connect to a torrent of 'Heroes' or 'House' or whatever, your IP address gets recorded, and the copyright holders subpoena the university to know what user had that IP address at that time, why does the university need to 'take a stand against it'?
Now, I'd certainly agree that some stories on slashdot talk about inexplicably large fines being requested. And certainly innocent people who are wrongly accused should be entitled to reclaim reasonable costs for their defence. But to say students are being forced to buy record labels' music, or to say that universities have a responsibility to cover up lawbreaking by their students, doesn't really make sense to me.
In other words I found the article less 'scathing' and more 'worded emotively'.
Just my $0.02.
"Goodness me, how unlike the FBI to abuse the trust of the American public." -- The Onion
This is nothing more than a mere glance at the true extend of the RIAA's campaign. The number of students the RIAA has sued, most of whom couldn't hope to pay off a settlement or a lawyer to bring the case to trial, numbers way into the thousands. The truly insidious part is just that: the RIAA has billions of dollars available to sue people, and could keep the cases in litigation until the defendant just runs out of money and is forced to settle. There is no due process here, there never could be in cases like these.
Palm trees and 8
The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what clearly value enough to download by the terabyte -- corporate "content," as the Big 4 call the media that college students claim to think is all formulaic and worthless, and yet consume at an at enormous rate when it's free and easily pilferable.'
How something is 'described' by someone else with an agenda matters very little (unless a lot of people fall for it). It's just as reasonable to 'describe' millions of college students as "people who want to force their favorite artists to provide them with entertainment for free." Which is more accurate? That performers, and the studios they work with, want to actually "force" someone to buy something, or that many people who swear they love a particular performer or recording artist are none the less happy to rip of that person's work, despite the wishes of the very performer they claim to respect?
Neither description covers everyone. But saying that a recording artist wants to "force" people to pay for the entertainment they're providing is a lot like saying that a movie theater wants to force people to actually pay for a ticket on their way in to see a movie. It's absurd. No one is forcing you to listen to a recording, and no one is forcing you to see or hear any other performance, either. Don't be a consumer of it, and no need to pay for it. Except, of course, those countries that are insane enough to think it's reasonable to levy taxes (and thus, literally force people to pay) which are then spread around to artists - whether or not the people paying the taxes would ever want to be entertained by those artists or not. That's the only "forced to pay for entertainment" that it's worth talking about. Otherwise we may as well talk about how grocery stores are forcing their customer to pay for what they want, or how a chef is forcing his customers to pay for the creative services she provides.
Don't use the word "force" when it doesn't apply. Don't want to pay for Bruce Springteen's latest recording? Then don't acquire it, unless HE chooses to give it to you.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Fleur de Sel
The day we use technology to unite in collective effort, disseminate intelligence and wisdom to dissolve ignorance and share a single intention then the consumer the citizen will take control as master.
The "Many", the consumers combined wealth far exceeds that of the "few" because the consumer delivers real value every day.
Many of those individuals or corporations that control vast wealth only do so because we perceive the fiat currency, the intangible symbolic units to have value. As soon as this illusion is destroyed their power is gone.
We the people control the cash flow of business and labor, the worker produces the products and services that make the world go around and this is where the real tangible value is.
We the people are very powerful, but we have been blinded to our own power by an illusion created by those that benefit from the current systems and don't want them to change.
"an infinite player that has lost his finite mind" ~Infinite Play the Movie (it blends with reality)
It's great business sense to sue your potential customers.
Students - people with very little money by definition - should be sued until they decide that music as an entertainment form is not worth it when there are games and DVDs and other activities to do instead.
It's not like students go on to be big earners who may in the future have the disposable cash to buy lots of music.
The music execs are on so many drugs that they believe that the losses from infringing the copyright on music can exceed the gross national product of the country. This type of thinking does them no good at all. The basic fact is that someone who downloads 100 albums in a month ($1000-$2000 value) is in no way ever going to have paid for all of them. They might have paid for a few, and indeed a lot are still buying CDs alongside downloading them. Why do people download music - for people with money it's often as a taster, and that's the best route given that there is no variety on the radio, so no way of good music getting to the audience unless they download it. And no, listening in a shop is not a viable option, and thirty second snippets aren't great either.
I think they would be better off selling (for a nominal fee) music rental services to students affiliated with universities. Get them hooked and getting the music via approved music rental systems. Once they leave university, the music will stop working after a short time (say 6 months) - or they can pay the adult rates - the ex-students will be earning money, and they will have a budget for entertainment, and they may choose to spend that limited budget on music! Yes, "limited budget" - the execs in their $200k cars might not appreciate that people have to live (and there's a credit crunch, etc) and that frivolous entertainment expenses are the first things to be cut back.
Chase the piracy-for-profit people, not your actual potential customers.
But the real problem is that the business model is flawed at its heart. EMI know this and they're struggling through the beginnings of reworking things - doesn't help that the artists are complaining that their drug funding and advances will end. There will be a lot of pain over the years.
I'm not sure exactly what the article was trying to convey. The corporate influence on the music industry today is what it is, and while the industry's shotgun approach to dealing with copyright infringement is not the right way to go I still think that these people getting sued have only themselves to blame. The industry wasn't really concerned with copying back in the old days when you had to actually get physically involved; it was difficult, time consuming, and expensive to set up any kind of large-scale effort. A couple of guys copying each others' tapes wasn't much of a threat. Today, technology has made it infinitely easier to reproduce and distribute world-wide. Of course the industry should have had the foresight to take advantage of this themselves in the first place, but that doesn't excuse what's going on right now. These works still benefit from the protection copyright offers; that it is trivial to infringe is irrelevant. If you don't want to risk being sued then don't infringe. If you think the laws are unjust, petition to have them changed; that doesn't give you a free ticket to do whatever the hell you want. More importantly, if you truly believe that these guys are corrupt, evil bastards, wouldn't it make more sense to completely boycott their product altogether? Otherwise it gives them the false impression that the demand for (and infringement of) their product is continuing to increase and as a result they will seek stronger protection they deem necessary to protect their investments. If you really want to hurt them, completely ignore them and make use of alternative suppliers.
So this morning I got up and waged war on eye crud. I followed shortly after with a war on two fronts. A war on full bladders and a war on clean toilets. Next I waged war on not being at my computer. Then I went to war on dark monitors. Then I declared war on Firefox.exe. Then I went to war with slashdot's servers and blank Firefox pages. Then slashdot's text had the audacity to wage photon based war on my retinas! In retaliation, I counterattacked with a covert war on the Reply button, then followed up with a brief war on empty subject text boxes. Then I engaged in a somewhat protracted war on empty comment boxes. Now in closing, I'll stage a blitzkrieg on the submit button and preemptively declare victory.
Question everything
Why would they do this? You read a headline like "RIAA war against college students" and it just seems so ridiculous you only kinda half-believe it. I mean, you all know about their tactics and what they're up to - and true, it is deplorable and grotesquely selfish and short-sighted for the betterment of all. But why a war on college students? College students - the people who are at the pinnacle of our nation's pride, those hard working fun loving kids, struggling to better themselves and who are the bright future of our nation and society. And besides that, they party their asses off and are enjoying what is the best period of their lives! God love 'em, college students! We do love 'em, and not only that, we remember how our college years were the best times of our lives too, and we care deeply that the fun and traditions of college life that we enjoyed be continued for future generations to come.
So, as a whole one of the most beloved groups of people in our country, our very future is in their hands, and these RIAA assholes want to war with them?! To knock them all down a peg and into submission?! What is wrong with these people? Who do they think they are?
And they are serious people. This is not a game. It is a sickness that exists in our society, only in this case showing it's ugly head on a much grander scale. The same kind of sickness that, on a smaller more individualized and private scale leads to child abuse and neglect. The sickness of the old and infirm who see the younger generations, not as human lives that should be nurtured and taught lessons, but rather as objects to be used and exploited.
Are we as a nation and society going to allow this? Never. These RIAA sons of bitches are going to pay for what they are doing. Even now they are dying off into slow extinction. This period we are in now, unfortunately for us to be witness to it, is their last ditch effort, like a cornered wild animal, to save themselves and their way of life at any cost, no matter how ugly.
But they can't win. Human nature and millions of years of evolution are against them.
college students > rich media kingpins
> The way I see it is: If the content is so terrible, don't download it.
I don't. Wouldn't be caught dead listening to their music. However, there are a couple of factors you've neglected:
1) They sue the wrong people often enough. Remember that guy who didn't have a computer? I wonder if MediaSentry gave one of their boilerplate expert reports in that lawsuit? Because it would be really interesting if they had.
2) Anything popular is crap, according to simple statistics. That's a contradiction in terms, right? But a really good song might be liked by 80-90% of the people who hear it (the actual percentages don't matter, just accept those numbers as an example). So now we have 10-20% of the people who hear it who don't like it to some degree, a few of whom will likely hate it. Now realize that every song has a different percentage and that percentage is made up of different people. So the more popular you are, the more people there are who hate your music. In fact, the more people who hear it, the more likely it is that there are people who hate every single bit of music you've produced.
It may be counter-intuitive, but it's pretty clear that the more popular your music is, the more it's heard, so there are more people who hear it and hate it. It's the "Curse of Popularity"
There's a counter-point to this, too, BTW. If enough people hear an awful song, there's likely to be at least *one* guy who really loves it (probably the guy who wrote it). Thus, you have niche music that's horrible to most people, but which attracts a tiny fan following which absolutely loves the music. This is how you explain the Indee crowd.
Oh, and nothing here is exclusive to music. You can get the same thing with wine snobs, art, sex or anything else based on personal taste.
Was that a supposed to be a threadjack attempt, or just a troll? Whatever else it was ... it was off topic.
>to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," Where is the force? My heavens, if they really are using force (e.g. guns, knives etc) then the criminal courts need to get involved. If you don't like it, don't download it or buy it. If you do like what artists have done, then be willing to pay for it. If you really believe in free music, then go out there, learn to play an instrument, write some music, record it and give it away. Get some friends in your area or on-line to play other parts. Encourage others to do so. Don't forget you have to buy or rent an instrument, and get some lessons or books, spend a lot of time learning and writing music and lyrics. You may need something to record with and record on to. If you are popular you may need a site with lots of bandwidth (youtube could work here for free). It is not rocket science. In fact it sounds more like "Millions of people forcing the artists to work for free or feeling free to steal music." If you don't like the record companies, find some local bands, get together and start your own, but make sure you don't charge anything for your time to record and digitize music. Also find out if the local bands really want to work for free.
All of these articles about the minor skirmishes in *AA's war against infringers are boring and serve no purpose other than to provide yet another forum for some people to say: "Copyright infringement is wrong, like stealing," and for others to claim: "No, it is not exactly the same as stealing, and therefore good." The exact details of each legal encounter don't change anything, and are only useful to the practicing lawyers...
Unlike the emacs vs. vi flamewars, this one can, actually, be resolved with some certainty, and whoever can be convinced is convinced already....
Perhaps, our distinguished editors can delegate these articles to some peripheral subsection instead of the front-page?
My main concern with RIAA's methodology is not that they are suing people, but that they are doing it at the wrong end. They should focus all their firepower on the distributing powers of the pirated software, because going after individuals will only screw up the life of a few selected ones. It doesn't scare anyone because the odds of a lawsuit are about the same as winning a Megaball lottery.
The music industry is one of a few industries that struggles with technological breakthroughs. A car maker will obviously want to adopt to the latest gadgets. As will cell phone makers and so on. For some reason, that piece of plastic is the only viable option to the music industry - as if the age of digitalization was totally absent.
Full Tilt
10 rant against RIAA
20 generic comment that piracy is still wrong
30 tangent about DRMs originating in Nazi Germany
40 someone yells Godwin's law
50 next RIAA article is posted
60 goto 10
http://greenobyl.com/ please.... think of the children!!
Music is non-essential entertainment.
The providers of it offer it for sale.
You can buy it if you like.
If you don't like the terms, or the seller, or something, the answer is extraordinarily simple - don't buy it. This won't kill you. You can live without music.
We have laws saying you can't steal stuff. What do people think is special about music that you should be able to steal music in contravention of this general principle? (If you don't believe in the general principle please let me know where you live and I'll come round and help myself to all your stuff.)
I went to college in the last half of the 1980's for my undergrad. At the time, the RIAA was working very hard to push for the tax on blank cassette tapes. Fliers were frequently posted around campus strongly urging students to write to gov't officials to bring in the tax. The school administrators would frequently mention that the RIAA needed our support and to write our letters. Most students saw it for what it was, bullshit.
At the time also, Digital Audio Tape (DAT) was in its infancy and there was a lot of discussion concerning it especially implementing copy control. The DAT players were too expensive to become a concern to school administrators unlike the music downloads of today.
My personal connection. I bought the CD's but I made cassette tapes off the CD's for use in my car since CD players were very expensive at the time and if CD's are left in the car, they were subject to wide temperature variations or being stolen. I made copies to Metal (Type IV) tape. The pre-recorded tapes were of cheap materials and were subject to becoming breakfast to the tape player.
I can't speak for anyone else, but the only thing that the RIAA has ended up doing is driving me toward indie labels who either don't care about p2p downloads or want the extra publicity that results from file sharing. Without the RIAA I likely would never have discovered the likes of Spoon, The Books, or Andrew Bird and the level of quality from those artists outstrips anything I've heard on the radio in a long time.
So, RIAA, thank you. Thank you for being dumb-asses, and showing me how much your music really kinda sucks.
Sure the RIAA has an outdated business model and they are doing some serious wrongs to people who haven't broken the law.
But I at the same time I am a college student and I have no illusions about younger peoples' attitudes about sharing copyrighted material. It has nothing to do with DRM or outdated business models. Even if the RIAA and MPAA were to disappear tomorrow and be replaced by the most streamlined business model with everything in an open format, mass piracy will be unaffected as long as students can't afford to pay for the content. The vast majority of the students could care less about the "War". Ideologically they may agree with people against the RIAA, but only so much as they don't want to be sued. As long as there's little to no risk of an individual being sued, there's no better business model than free. Because of modern technology, when we pay for a song or movie now, we aren't paying for the content itself anymore. We are paying for the guarantee that we won't be sued. In order to make money off of content now, the copyright holders have to set the price according to what people are willing to pay for that guarantee. If there's no risk or a super tiny risk of being sued, then people aren't going to pay anything or are going to only pay a small amount such as a penny per song. So yeah keep fighting your fight against things like DRM and shady enforcement tactics, but stop assuming that everyone is on your side. The truth of the matter is that the vast majority of filesharers do it because it's free. It's just part of our culture now that you don't have to pay for stuff because you won't get caught
This may seem like a shameless plug for a service, but it's an easy and LEGAL way to get free music. http://www.ruckusnetwork.com/aboutus.php Basically it's an add supported service compatible with Windows XP DRM. You have to be actively enrolled in a subscribing university [list here: http://www.ruckusnetwork.com/affiliated.php%5D. If you're school is already footing the bill, why not? Don't pay RIAA tax twice if you don't have to.
The big record labels know (most of) their music is crap. That's why they don't offer free, reduced quality, 30 second samples. They know that if sampled, most people will decline to buy. They'd also decline to download. I wonder just how many downloads people make end up being deleted or simply ignored because that's when they discover it's crap. I also wonder how many people who find something they like end up buying it from a legal source (but aren't do this as much as in the past just because they now know which songs are crap and not worth buying).
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
The media and entertainment companies' stranglehold on a dying business model is hardly a stockholders' dream.
Warner Music (WMG) stock, 2006: ~$30, Today, ~$8.00; DreamWorks SKG (DWA), 2005: ~$40, Today, ~$25; CBS Broadcasting (CBS) 2000: ~$45, Today: ~$25.
The market conditions surrounding the film, music and broadcasting industries are incredibly volatile right now. I'll grant you that they're pursuing mostly counterproductive strategies in their efforts to stabilize themselves, and DRM + consumer abuse is hardly helping matters. Still in all, mere perception that (Is Media Corporation) == (Rolling in Money and Laughing Maniacally) is a gratifying mental image, but it isn't exactly the case.
Pi Ran Out
Even those of us who don't care about music in the slightest are still impacted when the RIAA rocks the boat. Ask a Vista user.
Yes, but they don't sue their fucking customers.
It's really not that hard to not smoke.
Being wrongfully accused of theft, and then sued for hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars, is caused through no fault of your own. Unlike smoking.
Yes, I said wrongfully accused.
Oh, and yes, I do smoke cigarettes. And if I die from it, I am not going to whine like a little baby and blame the company I bought them from.
I bought them. No one forced me to.
We often don't have that choice. There are plenty of DVDs that are not sold and cannot be played in certain parts of the world (no Battlestar Galactica season 3 in North America, for example). And here in Canada it's hard to buy major-label music for an MP3 player that's not an iPod. (Most of us think it's OK to buy and rip CDs, but apparently the record companies disagree.)
In many cases the only way for us to get "content" is to download it illegally. The content producers have very deliberately set it up that way, so why are they suing us?
Because, of course, you would be dead...
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
I completely agree with you - but you don't take a copy of the cigarettes, make a copy of them yourself and pay nothing to the manufacturers do you? ;)
Although actually, I'd be interested to hear of a comparison between what percent of music is pirated and what percentage of cigarettes have not had their tax paid.
Similar situation?
More and more, the RIAA war on download piracy makes me think of the government's war on drugs. Not a perfect analogy, but think about it:
One war spends vast sums of money to interdict a tiny percentage of illegal drugs, while overall use continues to rise. The other war spends vast sums of money to sue a tiny percentage of illegal downloaders, while overall downloading continues to rise.
Both wars target users who do not consider what they are doing to be immoral or wrong, and who will likely continue their activities despite any laws passed against them.
Both wars have generalized popular support from Mr. and Mrs. America, who are ignorant of or blind to the tactics involved and the overall futility and low success rate.
Both wars snag innocent people in their dragnets. If you happen to share a house with someone who has drugs, you can be arrested. Likewise, if you happen to own a computer on which someone else downloaded copyrighted material, you can be sued.
Both wars are stubbornly persistent and deny reality. The government refuses to acknowledge that legalizing and regulating recreational drugs would result in less crime, fewer overdoses, and far more money available for treatment and prevention and education. The RIAA refuses to acknowledge that digital technology has made their system of distribution and compensation rapidly obsolete and in need of a quantum change.
I could go on and on, and y'all could probably come up with some of your own parallels. The only real difference is that being caught up in the war on drugs can land you in the slammer for a long time, while illegal downloading will not.
Yet.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Umm, if you could copy cigarettes would you consider it necessary to invent a law to prevent it or would you consider that an insane law that could only exist if the government were corrupt and taking bribes from cigarette manufacturers?
How we know is more important than what we know.
Slightly leading question... but isn't non-monopolistic competition healthy?
From Wikipedia - it is estimated that 25-30% of all cigarettes smoked in the [UK] country avoid UK taxes.
From the BPI - 10% - estimated UK music piracy rate, of which Internet comprises of 5% of that 10% (yeah, thats 0.5% of the total population).
Maybe the RIAA/MPAA should move into cigarette taxation. Seriously, is 5% a major amount? Markets, Car Boot Sales & Street Vendors apparently contribute to 31% of that 10% (that's 3.1% of the total population, obviously). Why are Internet users and students being attacked the most? Easy targets?
to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy -- corporate "content," Where is the force?
It gets sillier...
From TFA..
"...Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG and their RIAA is trying to sue students into buying 'product'."
So the articles suggests that if you don't buy their product, they'll sue you. Such a conclusion is more than a bit ridiculous, no?
Perhaps 'cause:
Sure, I use to buy music when I was younger, but I don't buy much anymore -- nor have I ever downloaded anything. I've purchased 3 CDs in the last 10 years. What I already have is either better than what's new, or I'm simply just happy with it. In the car, I either listen to a CD or NPR; commercial radio is crap.
Great music never goes out of style. Perhaps some of the younger crowd have music from their parents :-) I mean, would you really want to listen to "Oops, I did it Again" over anything in your parents collection? How about instead of a baby whining on an airplane - oh, wait, that could be Britney too.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Study after study shows that people 16-25 years of age are such a vanishingly small percentage of the music listening public, that any backlash is likely to go totally unnoticed. If they were actually targeting the core fanbase demographic of most artists, it might be more of an issue.
I like music
Has the RIAA stopped to consider that college students are spending as much as ever attending live shows? Downloading is not hurting ticket sales. Offering free MP3s with the purchase of concert tickets or club admission would probably earn more than copyright lawsuits. The RIAA can adapt or die. It appears to me they are more interested in licking their wounds than seeking greener pastures.
From their standpoint, I'd guess that they see the Internet as a larger expansion risk. Street Vendors aren't going to open up stores and move into major malls, but the web 2.0 epoch is upon us, and the internet shows a lot of potential for expanding that piracy.
Not that I defend them, it's just that I can see how they'd fall into the blunder of fighting the goliath.
The problem is that, mostly, whatever I download is rocketed to the recycle bin within a few plays. Most of what's popular is crap at best. Although, I have found a few bands that have become permanent parts of my collection that I wouldn't have given a spin if I had to pay. If I get "you gotta' hear this band!" from a friend with decent taste, I can download it without shelling out cash I don't have (hrm... books or food this semester... knockoff books from over seas and generic brand ramen, FTW!), for a disc that would end up as a coaster anyways. I'm not a fan of DRM, but if I like the music I end up buying it anyways. Unfortunately, they only have a player for Windows, so my G3 and Linux boxes are lacking support.
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Don't forget, among the other recent RIAA college sins, their quickly pulled back "audit package" based on GPL'd software for the colleges to use in tracking song swapping. It was another clear low point in the RIAA's campaign of terror and extortion.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
The campaign is described as one to 'force "consumers" to buy what they're told to buy .
Uh. I don't think so. I think they're just saying, "Don't steal our content." Maybe they're being a bit draconian with fines of $150,000, but no one is saying that you have to buy their cruddy content. They're just asking you not to steal it. It's a big difference and one that the anti-RIAA folks don't want to figure out. They want to steal-- er "fair use"-- whatever they like and then complain if someone says no.
Yeah, right. Where are my Jet Fuel Igniters to replace those old-fashioned spark plugs. And my lifetime windshield wiper blades that are so easy to find in the aftermarket. But most of all, I want the 200 MPG carburetor that the oil companies have been suppressing for all these years!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Not if the RIAA has it's way. They'd prefer criminal sanctions, including significant jail time, for "piracy". And in some cases now, the MPAA in particular, has gotten that (for releasing bootlegs ahead of their opening dates).
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Good thing I don't have mod points today. They would have all gone as TROLL -1's on this single article.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"to identify the person using the IP address at that time"
Mike,
this is where it all falls apart.
You can tell the *account* that has the IP address, but in many households, NAT'ing means at least 2, if not more, computers share that address. In my house, for example, there are 6 computers, and 8 people who share in IP address.
So you can't tell the person.
Can you file a civil lawsuit against the account holder? It may be possible, but the burden of proof, I imagine, is much higher. That's why for speeding/red-light camera tickets they fine the car owner, but not the driver. Primarily because they don't know who was driving. We have 2 cars and 4 drivers in my house. If a ticket shows up, it's hard for *us* to figure who was driving.
So the "evidence", in the most scrupulous of circumstances is at best unclear.
That's just another problem for the RIAA.
To recap:
1) The RIAA doesn't seem to be able to gather accurate IP information
2) Even if they do, there is no chain of custody, that is, there is no attempt to determine if you actually downloaded the song(s) they claimed
3) There is no chain of custody of evidence to show that you downloaded anything copyrighted
4) The RIAA cannot demonstrate they represent the copyright on any song they're suing you for
5) The IP address does not address the person who committed the crime.
Is that enough for you? Any one of those produce reasonable doubt in my mind.
You're kidding, right?
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Compare "roll your own" cigarettes to pre-rolled brands. Go on, do it yourself. Head down to Walmart or Walgreens or any Tobacco shop. Check out the price of a carton of smokes, then check out the price of a can (6 oz of tobacco) of Top or Bugler brand rolling tobacco.
You'll be looking at what... $50 a carton for Camels, and $10 to $15 a can for Rollies. You get 200 cigs in a carton, and you get 200 papers and enough tobacco to fill them in a can of Top (and 230 papers in Bugler). Brown and Williamson manufactured Bugler (also Kool, Pall Mall, Lucky Strike, etc) until 2004 when they were combined with RJ Reynolds to form Reynolds American. So this way you realize that it is a Class A tobacco product sold by a company that sells plenty of other major brands.
Now, if over half of that $50 a carton is tax... why is the same amount of paper and tobacco when sold unrolled cost LESS than the tax?
Just thought you should know, since you kind of asked.
"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they fly by." -D. Adams
The biggest crock argument that file thieves make is that they are entitled to steal content because the music industry is somehow immoral. After all, if all of a sudden we can go willy nilly and pick and chooose copyrights because we feel some institution is moral and another is not, then, what's to suddenly argue that well, the GPL is amoral and Linus Torvald's isn't even an American, and start stealing that work as well!
It's really simple. If you don't like to buy music from some morally bankrupt institution, then, don't buy it. Go find your music from people that are willing to work for free. I'm sure there are plenty of homeless people. If you like the content, and you want it, then pay for it, or, obey the terms of license from the holder of the copyright. Don't steal music copyrighted by Warner Brothers, and don't subsume GPL code into proprietary applications.
This is my sig.
If $$$ were king, they would figure out what the consumer wants and provide huge archives of back catalog at cheap prices and people would flock to the offerings for stuff their 30 to 60 Gig media players. How many people hit the national average and only buy 2 CD's per year? Their fight to keep the ASP high has killed the sales as much as anything. There is competition for the entertainment dollar. An upgrade to broadband, better car, bigger house, new flat screen, etc are replacing the CD's as a consumer choice item.
Wold you buy more than $25 worth of music in a year if it was 5-10 cents/track?
The truth shall set you free!
hehe, gotta love the mod who didn't see this as a troll or flamebait, just simply off-topic. Too bad there's no "funny" metamod.
/. editor job. Hang in there long enough and we'll eventually respect you as much as the other editors :P
Poor Soulskill. Of course, he knew (or should've known) what he was getting into signing up for a
"When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
So let us build a site with 30 second clips of every song iTunes/Amazon has. We'll use Amazon's craptacular storage system. And then provide two options: (1) the iTunes/Amazon link, and (2) the torrent to said song. Keep a running tally on each song's buy vs. theft. And then let the world know that, 'You bastards have bought $2.12 of X Britney Spears song. But stolen $16,239.20 of that same stupid song.'
But sadly, one doesn't have to build such a site to know that 'free' always makes it harder to devalue stupid shit:
The RIAA way:
Old: $78.00/30 (gas by the day) + $14.99 (made up CD average) + 30 drive time + 60 mall walk + 5 minute unwrapping, stupid fucking security label = $17.59 + inevitable broken CD case + -10 mood + +2 mood (orange julius or dipping dots)
New: $50.00/30 (internet by the day) + $1.06 (song on iTunes + tax) + 30 minutes at worst = $2.72, -3 Mood
The Pirate way:
Old: "I can't afford a car, I waste it all on the internet now."
New: $50.00/30 + $0.00 + easy to download + no forms (on non-gay torrent sites) = $1.67
You save more than a buck by pirating. Arr. And it is so simple to steal said album. In the time it took to write this article, I could have downloaded an entire album, deleted the fat (read: fluff, crap, regurgitated filth) from the download, copied the remaining two songs to my iPhone, gave the finger to the man, and still have time to finish this reply.
Now, if it could be engineered that stolen media could be given a bad smell, THEN and only then would you see a decline in pirating.
The downside of being killed is the upside of being dead.
When you've done no work to create the copy, why should you demand being paid for it?
Yes, you created the original, but you gave THAT away for a cash loan, so it's not about you any more and the question still stands: you never made any effort to make that copy.
If music really isn't essential and people stop buying, the artist is STILL bankrupt.
It appears these guys have a problem telling fact from fiction, even if it's their own.
What are you going to do if you are accidentally identified as the eveil file sharer? Sure, you may get eventually off but it still means a Godawful lot of hassle, pain and worry.
You may not have noticed, but they focus on those who can't really afford to fight back.
Cigarettes, huh?
Interesting choice. And a bad one...
Here's why: The bureau of Alcohol, tobacco, and firearms would never let you get that far.
It would be similar to making bath tub gin and then trying to go make a business out of it. They have a name for that. It's called bootlegging. Tobacco is in the same boat.
If you think the govt would let you "work" with tobacco in any way shape or form, other than farming it, you are kidding yourself. You need a license/permit/registration to even sniff it. And guess who controls those? Yep. The Government. So we're already there, pal. Been there for a looooong time already.
Yes I think thats its rather amusing that the music industry eating itself alive ... oh look everybody we've just invented this new way to shrink music so we can ship it around easily saving us millions of dollars, bugger ... hey don't use this ok, it was for us to save money while still charging you the same, there should be laws against people using technology in a way that was'nt intended.
Yup way to go, you even invented the means to copy stuff too, but we should'nt use that either right. lol.
Don't purchase or download any music from a label on the RIAA. Don't listen to music on the radio. Only purchase music directly from the artist, or from an interdependent label that is not evil.
Take away their money and they cannot pay for lawyers. The time you save can then be spent creating your own subculture.