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Comparing the RIAA To "The Sopranos"
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to commentator Therese Polletti at Dow Jones MarketWatch, 'the RIAA's tactics are nearly as bad as the actions of mobsters, real or fictional. The analogy comes up easily and frequently in any discussion of the RIAA's maneuvers.' Among other things she cites the extortionate nature of their 'settlement negotiations' pointed out by Prof. Bob Talbot of the University of San Francisco School of Law IP Law Clinic. His student attorneys are helping private practitioners fight the RIAA, and the the illegality of the RIAA's use of unlicensed investigators. She goes on to cite the fact that the RIAA thinks nothing of jeopardizing a student's college education in order to make their point, as support for the MAFIAA/Mafia analogy."
the Mafia has morals and a culture of respect
If everyone counter-sued the heck of them. And won. Maybe.
The RIAA doesn't have a cool theme song. And they wouldn't have to pay royalties if they did.
The RIAA has the law on their side so aren't they more like "The Untouchables" ???
The difference between the mafia and RIAA is that the RIAA (and MPAA) have had laws passed for their benefit to screw the public (for example, you're not supposed to reverse engineer / break DRM etc.).
Take Nobody's Word For It.
An interesting article on Ars Technica regarding copyrighted games:
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-developer-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.html
Basically the message is that pirates were never customers and can therefore be ignored. I would take it one step further and say that piracy is a form of free advertising. More than once I've bought cd's based on mp3's I heard. The music and movie industry suits are a bunch of whining dinosaurs; all they need to do is make the disks worth buying by offering additional content liek posters, stickers, etc..
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
The Soprano family seemed pretty human to me. Aside from the greed factor, I don't see that much humanity seeping from the RIAA.
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
So it's the Music and Film Industry Asociation of America?
While I agree that their tactics are ridiculous, to compare them to a criminal organization whose actions include murder, drug dealing, burglary, kidnapping, arson, and other felonious crimes is ridiculous - it doesn't advance the debate, it distracts from it!
The mob is just a business like any other. Every business-person makes their own decision regarding how immoral/illegal they're willing to act in order to make a profit. Some stop just past shady insider trading practices, others go all the way past fraudulent accounting, while others still go all the way to violent crimes, either explicitly or implicitly.
The RIAA and MPAA fall somewhere between Enron (and their ilk) and the diamond industry (probably leaning closer to the Enron side), but certainly with a number of mob-style tactics thrown in, without going all the way to actual violence.
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein
Well it depends on how you define "kill for profit." If you mean kill with a GLOC or a piano wire, then no, most monopolized industries don't kill for profit. But if you account for deaths that the company (or group of companies) could have prevented either through action or inaction but didn't expressly for the purpose of profit then I think you're actually out on very thin ice here. The monolithic pharmaceutical and health insurance companies knowingly "kill" thousands of people each year for profit. The manufacturers of cigarettes knowingly "kill" millions of people each year for profit. If you brought these charges up in court, it'd be 'wrongful death' instead of 'murder', but killing is killing and dead is dead as far as most people are concerned.
A-Bomb
Exactly. If you pirate something, like it, and can afford to buy it, do it. It's the moral thing to do. Ergo, anything you pirate and don't buy should be something you wouldn't or couldn't pay for. Most "pirates" I know or have spoken with operate this way. And so yes, it is basically free advertising.
The RIAA are EXACTLY like the mafia! Because they assault and kill people! Except they, uh...don't.
Nope. They send the Sheriff to do it for them.
Sue you.
Bankrupt you.
Send the law to seize your assets.
You get evicted.
If you try to stay the sheriff's men will throw you out.
If you try to resist them they'll use as much force as necessary - including deadly force if your resistance appears to be a threat to them.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
It's technically illegal but laws can be changed to reflect reality. The industries fantasy is that they should get paid for every time someone plays a song. The reality is that with unlimited supply with virtually zero production costs the value of an mp3 is basically zero. The fact is, you get more VALUE from a CD, but cd's have been massively overpriced for years.
Additionally, the music industry existed for promotion and distribution. Now that distribution is basically free, their only function is promotions. This puts the artists in the curious postition of being popular not due to their hype but their talent. Artists were never the ones getting paid from album sales anyway; the labels made the bulk of the money. Cut out the middleman by having bands sell mps'3 directly from a website and the money goes where it should-to the artists.
Artist may have to resort to actually PERFORMING in order to make money. Damn shame.
The industry ought to adjust to the reality on the ground: mp3's are advertising & thats all.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Furthermore, if you pirate it, you become proficient with it. So you give them mindshare.
So if you ever decide to use this software professionally, you will buy it. And you won't even consider purchasing anything else.
The software industry, in part, understands this and therefore does little to suppress home piracy of professional software. And that is why Windows was easy to pirate until it got to nearly every computer: now that you depend on it, we'll make you buy it.
Kind of like drug dealers — it's all free until you get hooked.
Indeed, strict enforcement of anti-piracy measures would really benefit F/OSS development, not the big companies.
Ignore this signature. By order.
I am still seeing people seriously discussing "mafiaa" association skymodded. I guess I am in the minority then.
/rant
Why is this association (RIAA - organized crime, criminals, etc.) stupid? I feel really stupid seriously considering this myself, but I guess I have to:
1. Organized crime deals mostly with illegitimate business, RIAA deals with a legit business.
2. Organized crime kills and maimes people, RIAA sues them for vast sums of money.
3. This association with its stupid accent on emotionality drives away from the real problems with RIAA. It is bloody not working!
The real problem is:
Why are you keep buying and listening to the stuff written by the people who are enslaved by RIAA? It is like buying sweatshop sweaters, except that in this case it's not sweatshops, but sweetshops - every artists dreams of being signed by the major label.
Why are you so addicted to this stuff anyway? Why do you have to listen every day to a new single or watch new movie? Have a life! The real reason why this thing is so bloated is stupid inability of recent consumer generation to act creatively and to entertain themselves. Buy a Guitar Hero and play yourself. Make music yourself, make videos yourself, make movies yourself. Listen and watch what other people like you did on youtube or in any other free, unlimited way... Why do you have to go down to the rock bottom of coach-potato entertainment where you do absolutely nothing and only consume entertaining stuff? This is not good for you, do you realize it?
Get on with your lives. Entertain yourself actively. Create yourself. You do not have to watch latest terminator movie ahead of time on torrents in order to create your own stuff.
It is more difficult but much more rewarding when you get appreciation of your family, of your friends, of your peers, of your social network, when you see your 5-digit number of views on youtube.com
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
It's wouldn't OR couldn't. For example, I would love to have a copy of Photshop CS 3. It is $650 [adobe.com]. I could afford that but would never spend that much money on it (i.e. I wouldn't ever buy it at that price). So, if I pirate it they have not lost a sale to me.
I used to think that way when it was either PC DOS or MS DOS. I have since changed my ways for the better. There are several advantages. This supports monopolistic providers. It eliminates market competition and produces a monoculture.
I was faced with the Photoshop issue and resolved to find an alternative when the BSA started making noise. When they started getting really nasty, I knew it was time to comply with their demands while at the same time not supporting them in a free market. I bought a digital camera which came bundled with ArcSoft's photo editor. It did the touch-up stuff I needed to do including cropping, red eye removal, and changing the resolution for a web page. It was legal and did the job. Now I am an avid Gimp user.
My photo editing has been followed by OS choice, Office suite choice and other choices. The end result is now instead of insanely priced monopoly products, the market is filled with viable alternatives with few exceptions. As the alternatives grow, the high priced stuff retires or is repriced into more attractive price points. For example, have you seen the price for PhotoShop Elements? They are still trying to hold on to the cash cow, but it is being eroded, not by piracy, but by the competition. MS is having the same problem with buggy Vista, OSX and Ubuntu. MS Office and Open Office, etc.
Don't pirate and support the monopoly vendor's products. Use the alternatives and make a rich field of usable products.
When I first got into stage lighting, I loved the demo of Martin's Procenieum. At $2500 a copy, it was out of the question. It is now NLA for good reason. Instead I use FreeStyler with a $60 USB interface.
http://www.digimedia-mls.com/dmxplus/ This died with Windows 95. At a good price point, this could have grown into a great product. The clones ate it for lunch.
http://users.pandora.be/freestylerdmx/ Freestyler Rocks and is free.
http://www.dmxcontrol.de/joomla/?lang=en DMX control another freeware console rocks, but has some language translation problems.
Manolator is a pared down version of Procenium that also rocks. A lightshow on a DMX lighting system instead of buying the Lights-o-Rama package is possible if you already have DMX dimmers. Load up your song in Winamp, set the events to time to the music and rock on. This also uses inexpensive interfaces or you can build your own.
http://www.freedmx.com/
An here is a free drop-in replacement for the $2500 software. Nice easy to use console. Free....
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html#screenshot Screenshot.. Requires giving an email address to receive.
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html
Avoiding piracy and shopping for good alternatives is legal and sticks the high prices right where it counts.
Overpriced simple software quickly becomes surrounded by clones.
If you want a full featured DMX software desk, there are many packages from about $200 to several grand. Only spend the money if the competition won't do the job. Don't pirate it.
The truth shall set you free!
No, I didn't. You even quote me stating that "I would take it one step further...", i.e., *beyond* the points made in TFA.
Anyone who listens to the mp3's are potential customers. Share it and another potential customer hears the song. Repeat several thousand times and you have bona fide "buzz". Someone will buy the disk, go to the show, whatever. Money is made.
How about this: If I distribute mp3's over the internet, the record companies should pay ME for helping to advertise and distribute their content. How's that?
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
I just read an article about some author (I wish I could remember his name) who made his latest work available in its entirety for free from his website at the time of publication. Basically, the book sold better than expected because more people got to see it.
You are making exactly the same arguments as the RIAA regarding "lost sales". By your argument borrowing a book from a library is theft. Copyright law as it is currently being interpreted by the RIAA and MPAA fails to recognize the intrinsic value of the propagation of culture. Besides, the "law of supply and demand" works regardless of legality. If YOU make your work available for free from your own website you could generate advertising revenue from traffic AND completely negate any need for piracy in the first place. If I liked your work I would probably purchase hard copies and have done exactly that in the past for books, films, music AND games. Personally I feel the purchased versions to be a better value.
Equating piracy with theft on a one for one basis is bad business; all you do is piss people off and those people are your customers.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
You have the money for it, you want it, but you don't want to pay for it. So, you'll just take it. If this was a store, that would be called shoplifting. Last I checked, there were other options, like downloading an open source solution, or taking your business to a company that doesn't overprice their software.
Look, I understand your point, but you should reevaluate the copying = stealing line. I am giving examples, not because the specific software is important. Think about 10 years ago when Photoshop was thousands of dollars. There was no GIMP or lower priced alternative. I would NEVER pay thousands of dollars for Photoshop. Therefore there is no sale lost, because I would not save for it, would NOT EVER buy it at that price.
Of course there are immoral people in the world, but to argue that copying = stealing is a false generalization of a very new and complex phenomenon. The point is, copying IP does not always cause a loss of sale and in some cases creates a sale. This property of IP is not like physical property at all.
We can't all be rock stars. The bands who can't create something that people are willing to pay for will either fade away, or do it because they want to, which is the way it should be, anyway.