Slashdot Mirror
BusinessWeek Takes On the RIAA
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "BusinessWeek magazine has gone medieval on the RIAA, recounting in grisly detail the cruel ordeal to which the RIAA has subjected a completely innocent defendant, Tanya Andersen of Oregon. Nobody can read the story and come to any other conclusion than that the RIAA and its lawyers are total jerks. Of course we've been reading about Atlantic v. Andersen on p2pnet.net and on my blog, and discussing it here, but there's something extra special about a mainstream publication like Business Week really letting them have it."
...if Slashdot started naming the large companies behind the RIAA at every occurrence, so any misbehavior on their part is directly related to the "Big Four". Right now, most of us reading about the RIAA don't directly associate them with Sony, Warner, EMI and Universal. And this is exactly what they intended! Let's not endulge them any further.
...but a terrible implementation. Like it or not copyright law is on their side. And piracy is a net drain on the economy (I know I'm gonig to get modded down for that statement so I'm possting AC).
For example, I own a struggling record store. CD sales have dropped through the floor. People aren't buying half as many CDs as they did just a year ago. Revenue is down and costs are up. My store has survived for years, but I now face the prospect of bankruptcy. Every day I ask myself why this is happening.
I bought the store about 12 years ago. It was one of those boutique record stores that sell obscure, independent releases that no-one listens to, not even the people that buy them. I decided that to grow the business I'd need to aim for a different demographic, the family market. My store specialised in family music - stuff that the whole family could listen to. I don't sell sick stuff like Marilyn Manson or cop-killer rap, and I'm proud to have one of the most extensive Christian rock sections that I know of.
The business strategy worked. People flocked to my store, knowing that they (and their children) could safely purchase records without profanity or violent lyrics. Over the years I expanded the business and took on more clean-cut and friendly employees. It took hard work and long hours but I had achieved my dream - owning a profitable business that I had built with my own hands, from the ground up. But now, this dream is turning into a nightmare.
Every day, fewer and fewer customers enter my store to buy fewer and fewer CDs. Why is no one buying CDs? Are people not interested in music? Do people prefer to watch TV, see films, read books? I don't know. But there is one, inescapable truth - Internet piracy is mostly to blame. The statistics speak for themselves - one in three discs world wide is a pirate. On The Internet, you can find and download hundreds of dollars worth of music in just minutes. It has the potential to destroy the music industry, from artists, to record companies to stores like my own. Before you point to the supposed "economic downturn", I'll note that the book store just across from my store is doing great business. Unlike CDs, it's harder to copy books over The Internet.
A week ago, an unpleasant experience with pirates gave me an idea. In my store, I overheard a teenage patron talking to his friend.
"Dude, I'm going to put this CD on the Internet right away."
"Yeah, dude, that's really lete [sic], you'll get lots of respect."
I was fuming. So they were out to destroy the record industry from right under my nose? Fat chance. When they came to the counter to make their purchase, I grabbed the little shit by his shirt. "So...you're going to copy this to your friends over The Internet, punk?" I asked him in my best Clint Eastwood/Dirty Harry voice.
"Uh y-yeh." He mumbled, shocked.
"That's it. What's your name? You're blacklisted. Now take yourself and your little bitch friend out of my store - and don't come back." I barked. Cravenly, they complied and scampered off.
So that's my idea - a national blacklist of pirates. If somebody cannot obey the basic rules of society, then they should be excluded from society. If pirates want to steal from the music industry, then the music industry should exclude them. It's that simple. One strike, and you're out - no reputable record store will allow you to buy another CD. If the pirates can't buy the CDS to begin with, then they won't be able to copy them over The Internet, will they? It's no different to doctors blacklisting drug dealers from buying prescription medicine.
I have just written a letter to the RIAA outlining my proposal. Suing pirates one by one isn't going far enough. Not to mention pirates use the fact that they're being sued to unfairly portray themselves as victims. A national register of pirates would make the problem far easier to deal with. People would be encouraged to give the names of suspected pirates to a hotline, similar to TIPS. Once we know the siz
In 6 months, that magazine will be called RIAA Week
"The RIAA is fighting very hard to make sure that [Andersen's case] never reaches a jury," says Heidi Li Feldman. I would too if I were doing something on the fringe of legal in a twisted business model that pits your clients (recording artists) vs. their money source (consumers). Asshats!
here not too long ago when there was another article on...
The RIAA
Now there is a surprise indeed.
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
Funny thing is, that I think their first statement is actually right. The damages are "incalculable" since they quite often used flawed studies, doctored data, fallacious logic, etc. to come up with that "3.7 billion" number in the first place.
Of course at the rate they are going it won't be long before they claim that every single TCP session established with the defendant is an instance of possible copyright infringement, or theft, and that it would just be easier to calculate damages based upon some one's bandwidth
abouttime
Dude, they're popping up every time.. Occasionally with slight differences. Welcome to the world of trolls...
I wonder if he can say that the RIAA lawyers and the RIAA are a bunch of needle pricked mother fuckers who'd sell their own mother into prostitution.
Or, the NewYorkCountryLawyer thought of working for the RIAA one time but his parents were married and they turned him down because of it.
By the way, is there a lawyer(s) that have the same zeal towards our Government's intrusion on our Civil Liberties. Yeah, the EFF and ACLU are doing things, but not quite on NYCL's level.
A little OT, but the link in TFS actually points to the print version of TFA (no, I didn't read it). This is like "Submitting To Slashdot: Best Practices". Kudos to NYCL.
Gabriel says it's not accurate to say the RIAA dropped its suit for lack of evidence. He says the user name Gotenkito may have been inspired by Kylee, since she admitted she liked Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese anime TV series that has a character with a similar name. He also says Andersen said in her deposition that she knew or listened to some of the country and rock artists whose songs were offered for download.
If you take a far enough stretch, you can 'prove' anything.
Hey, anyone here ever heard of Bon Jovi? THERE! PROOF YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, is your kid a fan of a wildly popular TV show? THERE! THE COMPLETELY UNRELATED GUY'S USERNAME WAS VAGUELY JAPANESE! PROOF POSITIVE YOU'RE A THIEF!
Hey, RIAA member companies brought Rammstein, a german band, to prominence. Hitler was German. THERE! PROOF POSITIVE THAT THE RIAA HELPED RUN NAZI DEATH CAMPS!
It's been a long time.
And here's the part that worries me, "The record labels declined to comment for this story, referring questions to the RIAA."
Lets take the best case scenario and say this class action lawsuit ends up being 100% successful and destroys the RIAA. The record labels behind the organization will simply dissolve it, like a snake shedding old skin. The next day a new association will spring up, using new devious tactics for the next 10 years before they too are finally ousted, and so on. Until Sony, Universal, EMI and Warner are held accountable for the actions of the RIAA this won't change.
They've done it at least once already, "The Settlement Support Center was a less public part of the initiative. Its name may suggest a neutral organization set up to resolve disputes with evenhanded objectivity. In fact, it was financed by the record industry and operated like a cross between a call center and a debt collection firm. The SSC has since been dissolved."
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Where did Verizon get teh right to hand out usage information to other businesses? Last I heard the USA was not China, we were not supposed to be subject to monitoring in a Big Brother fashion. Who lets these assholes away with reading our mail, watching our internet usage, censoring our access to information. The culture of the free internet is gone, we are now mice under observation in a lab. Nothing we say or do is private, everything is made available to big business to chew on for opportunities to market to us, extort us, or sue us. And it will only get worse.
CM www.cometenergysystems.com Blog: http://caribbeanrenewable.blogspot.com/
About time. The more "mainstream" pub on this whole debacle, the better. I think, if you were to lay out all the facts and history in front of the American people (well, those with brains, anyhoo), they would feel this way:
Is piracy wrong? Yes.
Does much P2P activity infringe on copyrights? Yes.
Do copyright holders have the right to defend and protect those copyrights? Yes.
Do the "yes" answers above justify bullying, intimidation, and harassment; spurious, questionable, and sometimes downright wrong technical claims; spying by 3rd parties; end runs around the legal system; or a general reluctance to allow accused file sharers to defend themselves, or take their case to a court of law? NO.
The last question is where the RIAA loses whatever moral high ground they may have.
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Reading through this story, it continues to shock me -- not what asshats the RIAA etc are -- but that we here, at the collective hive-mind that is Slashdot, haven't already come up with a way to help people wrongly being prosecuted by them and their sleazy lawyers.
There seems to be a clear pattern to their targets - people who know relatively little about technology and who are more likely to settle than battle it out in courts. I'd argue that we need to help these people out.
About halfway down the story, the defendant, Tanya Andersen is said to have looked up information online, hoping to find information on similiar cases.
Why don't we, through /., set up a site, aggregate information about similiar cases and build up a body of evidence to "[...] show that the RIAA engaged in serial bad-faith lawsuits [...]". In the long run, the space could serve as a place for debate on the current copyright regime, the inflated monetary value assigned to the songs/movies downloaded, etc.
I'm sure that some of us here are lawyers as well - maybe some time could be spent decoding the various court documents/legal stuff that the RIAA sends out - a distributed legal advice centre (cue Beowulf joke)...
This is just an idea, of course - but I'd be happy to get involved in whatever way I can. I have some small amount of expertise in building websites - perhaps that's the first place to start...
"I wonder if NYCL can say that the RIAA lawyers and the RIAA are a bunch of needle pricked mother fuckers who'd sell their own mother into prostitution."
He might be able to work it into parody somehow? Besides, pointing to a well researched "David and Goliath" article in a respected bussiness magazine and letting people paint thier own picture is much more effective.
Speaking of law, does anyone know if it would be illegal for think geek to print and sell a deck of cards using images of their faces?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Consumers are abandoning physical media in droves; filesharing is way up; Radiohead, NIN, Madonna, and now Metallica (!) are eschewing the labels; and those who have been sued by the RIAA are starting to win cases and university law schools are turning beating the RIAA into class projects.
/. implements new features, a deathwatch meter (like a /. poll, but ongoing) would be a fun one...
How long before the RIAA and the labels behind them vanish?
If
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Yesterday I heard about Nine Inch Nails new album (Ghosts) on NPR. I visited the band homepage, paid $5 (yes $5) via paypal, and downloaded the new album in FLAC. I didn't have to install a special software client (this turned me away from the amazon store), didn't have to use a centralized service, didn't have to create an "account" with a new password I'll never remember, nothing. Buy and enjoy. I'll admit I have downloaded unauthorized copies in the past. But at $5, which mostly goes straight to the artist, what is the excuse?
The article keeps using the word "steal". I don't think that word means what they think it means.
Andersen: Yes, I saw that movie about him.
RIAA: Pirate!!!!! Say goodbye to your children, it's Gitmo for you!!!
At what point can the RIAA be brought into court on RICO charges?
That has allot to do with the fact that they could not get very far that way. The government pretty much gets to decide if you can file a civil suit against them or not.
You mostly have to wait for them to come after you for a criminal matter, which you can then turn into a constitional matter via appeals if your rights are possibly being infringed. So someone basically has to be on the hook for something. Historically people have broken laws so as to create that situation, especially during the civil rights revolution. You have to be willing to accept the consequences of likely imprisonment though before you can go down that path.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
The article has it all wrong. There is nothing personal in the RIAA's action, it's strictly a business decision.
"The magnitude of this [theft] is incalculable," says Richard L. Gabriel. I'm wondering how they calculated the 3.7 billion in lost sales or any supposed 'lost sales'.
Jonathanjk.com
OK, so what happens to existing cases if the RIAA dissolves? Can a nonexistent/disbanded entity sue, or does the case simply pass on to one of the child corps?
It seems years back when CD's were just beginning to be marketed, and almost immediately people were complaining about their high prices.I really doubt piracy would be as big now if CD prices would have started and stayed at $5 a CD. I also think because of the high prices of music it has gradually played a smaller role in our lives. Compare how much you spent on music 10 years ago to today. People are spending their money on movies and video games where you get more value for the dollar.
Damn, those links don't work -- I am so disappointed!
Caveat Utilitor
It is really as simple as writing the editors of the publications in question. If enough people write them with cogent messages (not things like TEH MAFIRIAA SUX0RS!) then our voices are more likely to be heard.
"For the specific case of copyright, it is the only business model on the face of the planet where employees (read: distributors+"Artists") are expecting to be paid decades or even centuries after they are finished the job."
You mean, besides pensions?
Oh yes - creative artists don't get those...
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
The only thing legal about any of this is abuse of process. What you are looking at is mass produced fraud that should result in disbarment of everyone involved and jail time for the ring leaders. They knew what they were going to do to "dolphins" like Anderson with their "drift net" tactics. They also thought they were aiming for a less sympathetic but more pliable target when they targeted "rich" college kids. In all cases, the victims were stripped of their life savings if they caved in and of everything now and forever if they fought. The RIAA music sharing cases are one of the most degraded abuse of the legal system by the rich and powerful ever.
It's time for a backlash. The emails and reports behind this fraud should be ripped open to expose the guilty at the big music publishers.
The real question is the central point of copyright law, "What is the best way to share culture and knowledge?" Words like "piracy" have nothing to do with that question and are propaganda terms invented by companies that grew fat off government grants of spectrum in the 20th century. The internet allows people to bypass paper and broadcast publishing so those interests should be ignored. The best way to share culture and knowledge may be to allow limitless, non commercial reproduction by individuals and non profit organizations. It may be that there's much less money in publishing than there was when it was limited by scarce resources like spectrum and paper but it's better to live in freedom with abundant knowledge and culture than it is to preserve the companies that would profit by robbing us of those good things and the ability to share.
Don't bullshit me about the death of culture either. People will continue to amuse and educate each other without Sony, EMI, WB and their ilk. Live performances will regain their value as the scarce resource they really are. Nothing could be worse than current radio broadcasts. Textbooks will stabilize around real knowledge and lots of other good but unpredictable things will come out of free culture. It will be better than what we have known in the past.
The questions you ask lead us to policies like SoundExchange and other mechanisms of extending broadcast power over the internet. The question I've asked leads to freedom and justice. Which do you like better?
Asshats!
Though you didn't imply that copyright law needs to change because the RIAA are asshats, the entire theme of this post did. So I would like to challenge that directly.
1) The RIAA claims that we need to strictly enforce copyright law (and charge per copy) in order to ensure that artists get paid and continue making music.
2) The RIAA are asshats.
Therefore: we don't need copyright law (and strict enforcement) in order to ensure that artists get paid and continue making music.
This is an example of the "ad hominem" logical fallacy. Yes, they are asshats, but that has no bearing on the arguments they use to defend their business model.
I would summarize their position as a variant of the Hypothetical Syllogism (I am adding more premises than allowed, for brevity).
1) If we do not have strict interpretation and enforcement of copyright law, then people will be able to get an artists work for free.
2) If people can get an artists work for free, then most people will.
3) If most people get an artists work for free, then artists will not be able to make enough money to sustain themselves.
4) If artists cannot make enough money to sustain themselves, then they will have no economic incentive to produce music.
5) If artists have no economic incentive to produce music, then they will not make music.
Therefore: in order for there to be music (which we obviously want), there must be strict enforcement of copyright law.
To the best of my knowledge, that is the line of reasoning being advocated, and it should therefore be logically attacked.
I would specifically (and individually) attack premises 3, 4, and 5. According to the US Department of Labor most musicians work part time (already can't sustain themselves but work anyway) and also many of them earn money through live performances (monetizing their work even though free music is presently available). So my attacks, specifically, are:
3) Artists can still monetize their work, through live performances, merchandising, and alternative business models.
4) Even the lesser gains of part time employment or low-income alternative business models qualify as economic incentive.
5) Some artists produce music for the love of producing music, and think of compensation only after the fact.
So there you have it. In a nutshell I would say that we should at least experiment with the alternative business models, and see how they pan out. If all artists stop making music and America starts to experience cultural starvation, we can always reintroduce strict copyright enforcement later on...and then with much more universal support. As it stands, we are unwilling to even try, largely as a result of irrational argumentation (and, of course, a few wealthy/powerful entities who stand to benefit from our irrational behavior).
For those that haven't already seen this movie. 'Steal This Film II' and it's really quite good. It relates the crisis of the scribes fighting the revolution of the printing press to the current situation of the controllers of media and p2p. Enjoy. http://ilovextra.com/
Space Ghost Coast To Coast substituted the 1st Rammstein son gfrom the first Rammstein album (the only one out at the time, 'Du Hast' did not exist) for them theme song way back in 1997 or 1998. So I heard about it due to Cartoon Network/AdultSwim. IS that the RIAA's fault? FUCK.
-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
> He says the user name Gotenkito may have been inspired by Kylee, since she admitted she liked Dragon Ball Z, a Japanese anime TV series that has a character with a similar name.
I've watched the series, but it took me entirely too long to come up with Gotenks. And Goku and Gohan weren't even close enough to register.
They must have gotten into SCO's stash...
Is it me, or, like any good Shakespeare, are Slashdot trolls just becoming vaguely comic intermissions between the real action?
How dare you be so modest!! You conceited bastard!!
Enough with the fancy lawyerin' talk. Give it to us in layman's terms.
The very fact that these ostensible "competitors" have banded together in this way is, in my opinion, prima facie evidence of illegal industry collusion.
You are not only wrong, it is YOU who are leading this off-topic.
Say whatever you want about capitalism, but it is the ONLY system in this modern world that has WORKED for a long period of time. The ONLY one. You can find examples of all kinds of other systems, but capitalism has worked while the others have not.
Why?
Because it accounts for human ambition and incentive. It is HUMAN NATURE to want to be compensated for hard work. Any economic system that fights that nature is doomed to failure.
There are historical examples all around you that demonstrate the futility of trying. While I understand your idealism, that is all it is! In a practical world it will not work. Sorry to burst your bubble, but thousands of years of recorded history say so.
Now, back to your initial point: the problem (and there ARE problems), is not with capitalism per se, but with abuse of the system. Take antitrust laws, for example. Antitrust laws are "meta-rules" that keep everybody working within the system and rules of capitalism. The reason for their existence is because once monopoly or oligopoly take hold, then there is no more "free market" to keep things in balance. As long as there is a free market, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" has a chance to work... and it works very well indeed.
But anti-trust laws are not being enforced today (not much anyway, if at all). The FTC, FCC and so on have been allowing mergers of large corporations that would never have been allowed in the past. Corporations are bullying people left and right (part of the topic of this thread), and are not being stopped.
Read your history! This situation is not capitalism at all! It is called "fascism".
If you live to see true capitalism put back in place -- the system that WORKED -- then you will be in a place to bitch about capitalism. But since that is not the current situation, place blame where it lies: the current fascist pretensions of capitalism. They are two different things.
By wanting to make her case a class action lawsuit means that she'll end up with a coupon for $10 off her next CD, and her lawyers will walk away with millions.
Read your history. The reason copyright laws exist at all is to benefit society as a whole.
This argment has been prevalent in the discussions of "intellectual property" lately, and I would like to put this myth to rest. A "totally open" society, in which there are no copyrights or patents, DOES NOT WORK.
Our founding fathers were NOT stupid! They were painfully aware of examples in which the works of individuals were grabbed immediately "for the good of society". And it doesn't work.
A good modern example is China, where there are no copyright laws, and everything ostensibly belongs to "the people".
China today is good at manufacturing simple things, and making rip-off copies of the works of others, but it does not innovate! Why? Because there is no INCENTIVE to do so. Copying and selling the works of others makes money... invention does not. Why should anyone devote years to inventing something new, if they do not gain from the effort? The fact is, people will not.
Or founding fathers recognized that for the good of society as a whole, people need incentive to innovate, whether that be arts or inventions. So they allowed copyrights and patents for a limited time to the creators of original works. Originally, that time was 17 years for both patent and copyright. Thus the creator of the work could profit from it, for a limited time, and then the work would pass into the public domain and be free for all.
That system WORKED. It worked astoundingly well.
But today, copyright and patent law has been skewed to protect corporate interests at the expense of the individual. (This is doubly bad because original ideas are almost ALWAYS from individuals, not committees.) Copyrights have been extended from the short 17 years, to a ridiculous lifetime + 70 years. So the works do not pass into the public domain, even for someone who was born at the time a book was authored. This is unconscionable.
Under the original system, a lot of Pink Floyd would be in the public domain by now, free to copy and distribute. And a lot of others of course.
Our patent system has been suffering from similar distortion and incompetence.
COPYRIGHTS ARE NOT AT FAULT. Abuse and distortion is at fault. Copyrights and patents worked more than fine as originally set up. It is only recent abuse of the system that has caused such problems.
Do not "throw the baby out with the bathwater." Copyright and patent laws should be changed back to they way they were, when they worked properly. But just getting rid of them WILL NOT WORK. The Soviet Union was another excellent example of a system where "everybody" owned all "intellectual property". And just like China, they stagnated economically and did not innovate. Those are two BIG, recent, and extremely valid examples, dude. If you need more, you can read all about it in your history books.
============
"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- U.S. Justice Louis Dembitz Brandeis
The music industry is a business and extortion is a very successful newly-emerging form of that business. Business Week is the mouthpiece of successful business strategies.
So why should anyone assume that a story in Business Week about an unsuccessful attempt by the music industry to extort money from a random citizen is written from the side of the citizen? Business Week is more congratulating the music industry for successfully creating a new profit center by extorting millions of dollars from random former customers than they are defending the rights of citizens to be subjected to random extortion from powerful corporations.
People seem to be reading this story wrong. Business Week is lamenting the incompetence of this individual case rather than condemning the music industry's practice of supplementing its core business through random extortion of its former customers.
Capitalism has not been running a long time.
When did it start? Pretty much 1910 onward, really. Not even a century.
What did last a long time? Private enterprise based on inherited wealth and the mandate of the ruling classes.
Feudalism lasted centuries. In many places, millenia.
Let me know if capitalism is still going in 4000AD.
Hitler was Austrian.
IANAL but it sounds like the RICO Act (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racketeer_Influenced_and_Corrupt_Organizations_Act/) was just made for a case like this.
An otherwise good article got it wrong here.
Sure you can place a forged source address in an IP packet that you send. But no conversation can take place because the Internet "knows" a route to that forged address (which isn't your machine) and it is not possible to change that.
Garry Williams
...The more i want the death note. Damn you, Ryuuk! You gave it to the wrong freaking guy!
You make a good point. That's why you have to hit them where it hurts; their reputation/pride. If losing money doesn't make them flinch, how does the RIAA take to being publicly humiliated to the point that they can no continue to be powerful on the basis of 'We say we are, therefore, we are'? If they aren't careful picking their battles, everyone might realize that they actually don't have any real power... ironically, this is much of the model of the Supreme Court.
If the supreme court said tomorrow that jaywalking is a criminal offense, and no one enforced it, knowing it to be insane, then the perception of power that the SC has would be drastically lowered. So it is for the RIAA. You can't beat them by bankrupting them, you have to make them take every win at a marginalized victory or openly show that they have no real power. If they had no credibility in a court room, for numerous reasons, and you rip through their 'expert witnesses' like a hot knife through butter, they'll start losing every bit of steam they've built up.
The RIAA only survives so long as they seem scary enough to make people settle out of court and keep the heat off the labels. You take that from them, and the funding will dry up on its own for lack of interest and marginalized returns on investment. Keep up the great work, Ray! God bless!
If I mod you up, it doesn't necessarily mean I agree with what you've said, sorry.
Now that all the innocent people have been ass-raped, had their lives ruined, fought the good fight, these assclowns crawl out of the woodwork and say "bad RIAA, no cookie!" Where were you fucks (the media) when there was work to be done or your comments might have saved thousands from extortion? They don't give a shit about anything but making a buck now that it's "news." As far as I'm concerned the leeches at Business Week (and the other news media) are just as guilty as the RIAA. They didn't do their job reporting something of great importance to a lot of people until it was safe, profitable and the trendy thing to do. Journalism seems to have gotten flushed down the toilet along with anything even resembling corporate ethics a long time ago.
First and foremost sir, I really cannot give you sympathy since this is a verbatim copy of a previous post you did. I feel you are not being honest to the /. community. Now if you are being honest, my sincere apology is in order.
I feel though that you exercised bad judgment by doing what you did to those kids. All you did was make them go elsewhere to get CDs to put on the net - that is all. Ultimately, you stopped nothing. Now this would be the part where I would say "If you were to black list everybody who openly said in your store they were going to put the music on the net, you would be out of business in no time". However it looks like you are finding this out without anybody telling you. It can't get any more obvious than this.
The internet and piracy is not what is killing the music industry or businesses like yours. What is killing it is the lack of control and accountability the RIAA has, the negligence people like yourself have to change with the times, and just generally bad products coming out lately from the music industry. The final statement being what I strongly think is the culprit. Since music is not showing any new or interesting/creative things, there are fewer people wanting to go out and buy. Coupled by the fact the US economy is in or heading towards a recession, there is just a general lack of motivation to get a $15 CD that only has one song on it worth hearing.
The sooner some lawyers get dragged from their offices for a public round of punches to the balls, the better.
Because PS3 fanboys constantly feel the need to say how awesome Sony is for producing such a god-like console whilst simultaneously telling us how they hate the RIAA and it's tactics.
Sadly for people like this calling the evil music conglomerate simply the RIAA allows them to carry on loving Sony despite it being one of the biggest and worst players arguably the worst alongside Warner that make up the RIAA. Certainly EMI has had a change of tact since it got taken over by a large investment firm and isn't quite so bad and quite so backwards nowadays.
That's how I think about it.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Instead of listing the big four corporations, why not do something called "social network analysis", and create a map of the entire RIAA network of individuals, corporations, and the entire list of supporters.
The RIAA is more than just a collection of corporations. What you are really dealing with is a vast network of people who hold similar views and goals. The RIAA includes all it's supporters, including the bribed politicians who support the agenda. The RIAA also includes all who run businesses that cling to the outdated profit models and who refuse to even consider new ways of making money.
It's not just the RIAA. It's the MPAA, it's all sorts of organizations united around the same agenda of creating a type of eternal intellectual property which never dies. They want intellectual property to be eternal so they can secure eternal profits in a very lazy way.
Basically it's a scheme which a lot of people are involved in, as a way to get paid by pimping artists. It's a way to make money while doing no real work at all beyond hiring lawyers and suing people.
Social network analysis is the kind of analysis that was done to figure out who the board members were at Enron. It's the kind of analysis that the site "They rule" used to figure out the individuals who are on the boards of multiple corporations.
It's not the corporations like Sony, EMI or Universal that are doing this. It's the individuals who decide that this is the only way to profit, and who support an agenda that is destroying the music industry, and will eventually destroy the software industry with the software patents, and eventually they'll try to patent and copyright all information and use that to control human thought/knowledge.
The RIAA is not Sony Warner EMI Universal, at least the RIAA you are thinking of. It's actually a group of individuals who are on the board of directors of multiple corporations such as these but ultimately it's individuals and not corporations.
These individuals have decided to label anyone who does not agree with their agenda on how the industry should function, and how profits should be made, as "pirates". So they have a name for people who think like you, but what name do you have for people who think like them?
If you support copyright reform that frees/gives control to artists and fans, then you aren't one of them. Their network exists to keep control out of the hands of customers and fans. They want to control all information and keep that control away from the producers of the information and away from the consumers of the information.
So these people are trying to control the worlds information, and the people they label are pirates probably will eventually include those who support free software, those who are against software patents, those who want to actually OWN the music they buy in some way, those who want to MAKE music and completely control and own how it's distributed.
It's not as simple as a bunch of corporations, it's more like a battle to find out who should control the worlds information, the producers/consumers of it, or the people rich enough to own the rights.
I support the GPL and Creative Commons, just so you know where I stand. And I support Linux, Napster, P2P, and anything else which increases my freedom as a consumer and producer of information.
This is about who should own the worlds information.
Personally, I think the producers and consumers should own it, and not just a bunch of rich folks in suits who happen to have the money to buy all the patents and copyrights but who can't produce a damn thing.
It's not the companies that are bad. Companies are just methods of social organization. If you don't support these profit mechanisms that unethical individuals in corporations are using, then you should give your money to ethical individuals whereever you find them.
To start, you should at least KNOW about the people who run the company you do business with. Do you know about the people who run these companies like Sony? I doubt you even know their names.
Just look at what happened with Elliot Spitzer, he unleashed a war on prostitution and then we find he was seeing a prostitute himself.
How many of these people who work for Sony, actually have pirated versions of Windows?
How many of these people who verbally support the RIAA actually are downloading pirated music files?
Most of the people who talk about how downloading mp3s is stealing, probably have a folder on their pirated version of windows dedicated just to "stolen" music files.
The truth is, the media does not have a choke on Congress. The media is just better organized than you.
If you believe in Free Software, the Creative Commons, Open Source, and if you don't think downloading mp3s is equal to stealing, then it's up to you to set up your businesses and do business with people who have the same agenda as you.
Congressmen, even people who work for the RIAA, probably have downloaded mp3s, or mpegs that are in violation of the copyright, and if not that then perhaps they are using pirated software, and if not that then perhaps they use source code in violation of the GPL.
This is not about whether or not artists should be paid. Artists are going to be paid no matter who wins. This is about who should be in control of information, the producers/consumers, or rich folks who happen to own all the patents and copyrights.
One way to reform copyright law would be to make it far more expensive for a corporation to buy an individuals patent or copyright. If it costs tens of millions or hundreds of millions to buy a patent from a content producer, then the actual producers would make money. Another reform option would be to maximize freedom or customers.
Content creation should become a service. The artist should be a service provider. The consumer should be able to buy a CD and actually own the information on it, however they should not own the right to profit from that information.
This would mean you'd be able to listen to and share music, just not get rich by selling someone elses music. The current RIAA does not even want to allow you to control the music you legally purchased. They don't want you to be able to copy it, and that limits your free speech rights because you aren't PROFITING from it in any way, nor are you claiming you produced it.
It's real simple, there are two positions and two kinds of people. On one side it's those who support the old way of profiting, and on the other side it's those who support the new way of profiting. NEITHER side is anti-profit, and the old way of doing things is anti-artist and anti-consumer.
So my advise, KNOW who runs the corporations you do business with. Don't worry about politicians.
Political support will come after you are organized enough to put your politicians in. Organization is what you lack, your network is made up of college students and most of them aren't even organized enough to form a music consumers union with a mailing list.
The question to ask shouldn't be "which corporations are unethical", your question should be "Who are the bad bosses?".
When you figure out who the bad bosses are, then you'll know exactly who is responsible for what.
This situation, like the situation in every industry, or anywhere in society, is a situation of bad bosses vs good bosses.
Bad bosses tend to make bad short sighted decisions. These decisions might include destroying the world to maintain profitability. These decisions may destroy the music industry, the software industry, and many other industries, just so the shareholders can have access to cheap money. The thinking goes "If I can get paid without having to do any work, just by the stroke of my pen, why not join the darkside?"
A bad boss does not have to produce any new ideas, or produce any information, or anything really. A bad boss simply has to control the information, the ideas, and the results of the labor that other people produce.
A bad boss wants to get rich, or in some cases wealthy, off other peoples labor, off the natural resources in the environment, or by pimping artists.
The good boss cares about the artist and consumers, and wants to maximize the freedom and profitability for the artists, while also limiting the costs and maximizing the flexibility to the customers. The artist to the good boss is not simply a resource to be exploited, but is the corporation itself, and how the artist is treated represents the values of the corporation and of the Good boss running the corporation. The Good boss also wants the costumers to have an increased quality of life, so that the impact of the work of that corporation has some meaning to society.
And thats the difference right there. It's the good bosses vs the bad bosses, in a never ending battle for control. Who do you want to control the worlds information? People who want to increase your freedom, or people who want to control information in a way in which you have to pay a license fee just to access books, and where you can be sued if you tell anyone what you read in the book?
I'd rather promote a more open free society, where information production is a service and not a product. That would mean more information for us!
Imagine if the web worked through copyright where every site required a fee? Some of these people wanted to use that scheme for the WWW back when the discussions were on how to make the WWW profitable. They were wrong then and they are still wrong today.
This is a situation where you have to choose your boss! Do you want the good boss or the bad boss?
Each corporation has a boss or bosses. Do you know who they are? Yet you'll give them all your money, all your labor, all your ideas(copyrights), all your patents.
So if you give them all your shit, of course they'll pimp the hell out of you, because that's the lifestyle of a bad boss.
A bad boss does not have to work for a living, because you'll be dumb enough to do all the work for them. And if you are dumb enough to give up your freedom in music to the bad bosses, then you can't be surprised if you lose your freedom everywhere else.
Look at how artists have given up on having freedom? Sure most artists might support Napster, but lets be serious here, the current copyright laws are not set up to benefit artists or consumers. The current copyright laws are set up to help bad bosses profit by increasing costs to consumers while reducing profits to artists, thus they get rich by merely controlling access to information. They don't produce or do anything else for a living.
They get rich by telling us what we can't do. It's that simple!
Good Bosses want to get rich by increasing the amount of things we CAN do with what we produce and buy.
Step 1.
Start a digital consumers union.
Step 2.
Create a mailing list.
Step 3.
Start a Bad Boss Newsletter
Step 4.
Report all the horror stories and unethical tactics of the bad bosses to the bad boss newsletter, complete with a brief biography of the person as well as their corporate history and how they run their business.
And once you have that, you'll actually be able to coordinate and organize in a way which can influence members of the board of directors.