Slashdot Mirror
Music Industry Tells Advertisers to Boycott "Pirate" Baidu
An anonymous reader points to a story at PC Authority, which begins: "Music industry representatives have warned advertisers to stop supporting Baidu, China's largest search engine, because they believe it is encouraging music piracy. Baidu is the largest source of pirated music in China, according to the representatives, who describe the company as 'incorrigible.' The Chinese firm's music search engine is accessed through what is described as a prominent link on the company's home page."
http://www.google.com/search?q=prince+mp3+%22index+of%22
Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
I only see scribbles.
Attitudes make the difference between Space and Time: we want to MAX our temporal, and MIN our spatial extension.
Why would advertisers care? They don't have any music being pirated (or obtained legally, for that matter).
Maybe they should have sent Baidu a DMCA notice instead. </sarcasm>
Tomato wedge sperm darts that are Republican.
Didn't know about this until today, thanks RIAA! Seems you're doing more to help piracy than hurt it. Bash the (pretty f'ing bad comparably) napster, which lead eventually to the better protocols today, without which wider scale piracy wouldn't even be able to the masses! Then you give these mediums free advertising by screaming about how easy it is to get what you want to hear without dealing with extortion rate pricing. (Yeah yeah news groups, xdcc, etc... but your average joe can handle a torrent a lot easier than that)
A Chinese company that has little regard for copyright? This is an unexpected occurrence.
Am thoroughly disgusted by the illegal activities of these music companies and their hypocrisy.
Sony infected many computers with a dangerous trojan, which would have sent any hacker to 40 years in Prison, and they escaped conviction or even a fine.
RIAA has been ruled against many times in court and ordered to pay lawyers fees to a poor single mom, and still they are loose: No arrest, no seizure of their equipment, etc.
MediaSentry and other RIAA hackers violate state laws in Montana, California, Texas and a host of states and yet continue to operate even though they are illegal. None has been sued yet and their findings are valid in a court of law: Its like a thief acting as a witness to a houseowner against another thief.
RIAA would be happy if the whole internet shut down tomorrow but they still can produce music at zero cost and sell it for $29.99 an album.
The Baidu search engine should show its middle finger publicly at RIAA and also sue them for defamation.
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
OMG, you got t3h first post and you write something relevant and on-topic, not an AC troll?
What a n00b! Next time, make certain your post includes: Something About Goatse (have you seen that film? Cameron Pwndarse is great!), p1st fr05t, or a little ASCII art man with a big willy (reminding us that Slashdot suXx0rz).
Seriously mate, you'd better be careful, the question of trolling Slashdot is the inalienable perogative of your working Anonymous Cowards. What's the use of us sitting up all night, waiting for the next submission. If a member jumps in before you and doesn't even post a troll?
As a member of the Amalgamated Union of Arseholes, Loudmouths, Cowards and Other Trolling Persons I order you to stop getting first posts, and to stop getting first posts NOW.
Awesome. Now that they've called this to my attention, I'm going to start using it.
I searched for my own music on Baidu, and it didn't find it. How can I submit it?
I clicked all the links on the homepage, and hovered my mouse over all the links on the result page, and couldn't find anything that looked like a submission form.
I'd love it if everyone in China were to download my compositions - they are all Creative Commons-licensed.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
AFAIK, artists may be able to earn more money by putting their music to download for free on a website with advertising, than by going through a record company. When will the record companies finally realize they need to adapt?
..it was all Greek to me.
Oh wait...
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Hey recording industry guys, I'm going to give you a chance here. Tell us what's going on. Everything. What's the prominent link here? How are they encouraging piracy? Specifically. What EXACTLY are they doing? Tell us. Show us a legitimate argument, and I'll treat you with the respect that you deserve, however much that may be, and while I can't speak for the rest of Slashdot, I can only ask them that they do the same.
You're all but hated here, but I think you deserve one honest chance to prove your credibility – as long as you have that unproven credibility to begin with – to people who know the internet, and how and where it encourages and discourages piracy, better than damn near anyone else. So take it.
I make websites and stuff. Buy one.
You may be interested in the album I just recently released. It is available free to download. Licensed with the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Licence. This licence lets you use this music for commercial products or make remixes or other derivative works, so long as you give credit to the original artists. You can download the whole 11 track album at no cost at our website. We are also doing a name your own price CD (starting at cost price). http://www.politicsapocalypse.com/
The music industry works completely differently in China and everyone knows it. Especially the musicians. They know the only way to make money is through sponsored live performances and product endorsements. No-one expects anyone to pay for recorded music because it's completely impossible to stop piracy.
Yes, yes. Don't feed the trolls. But if the article is a troll in itself, why not?
The RIAA should tell songwriters to name all their songs with "Tiananmen" somewhere in the title. Problem solved!
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
It's not that simple.
For a start, advertising doesn't really pay big bucks any more. We've had companies flop during the peak of advertising money in the dot-con years with that model, what makes you think it's more viable now?
A quick search says that the Cost Per Click (i.e., what the advertising companies pay) can be as low as 1 cent per click. After the ad provider takes their share, it's even less money for the site carrying the ads. And that's per _click_. So if every single person downloading your music were to actually click a banner per song downloaded (fat chance) and the ad provider gave you the full cent (fat chance), you'd need to sell some thousands of songs per month just to pay for your hosting costs. Probably more, since you use bandwidth too.
Pay per view, even less. If you go really per view, expect it to be small fractions of a cent.
Remember, you're not Penny Arcade or PvP Online as a musician. You're not going to make a new song per day, and serve an ad or two with each one.
The RIAA members also provide one valuable service: they create a scarcity via marketing. There are hundreds of thousands of girls who can sing just as well as Britney Spears, and don't look much worse. But there's only one Britney Spears. And boy band members are even more dime a dozen, and chosen mostly on how well they look (i.e. how wet would they get a 16 year old girl seeing them on stage.) Not on any skills in composing that music or expressing anything profound. There are a few tens of million of young guys who'd be not much worse than, say, Backstreet Boys, and some would probably be only better.
So while it's easy to say "OMG, musician X is only getting a pittance out of the CD sales, and gets all the money out of concerts anyway," the more cruel reality is that musician X would be yet another _nobody_ without the publisher. Maybe a thousand people would know about his music, and maybe a dozen of them could be arsed to show up at a concert.
To put it otherwise, it's an economy of massive overproduction. If left to the free market, you'd be about as able to make a money out of music as you'd make money out of your farm in 1929. When there's 10 times more produced than anyone needs, and the products are perfectly interchangeable, the price doesn't just go 10 times lower. It spirals down to the point where nobody can make a living out of it.
Now I'm not saying it's necessarily the best model for society, but that's how it works.
And the moral of the story is: well, maybe a better model can be found, but it will have to be a better one than, basically, "but I want them to work for me for a tenth of a cent in ads."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Only here, this would be modded insightful instead of funny.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Why would advertisers care?
They want to advertise their product to as wide an audience as possible, and offering free MP3 downloads is a very good way to attract an audience.
Why should the owners of the businesses paying for advertising from Baidu put the interest of another business (the RIAA) before their own? That's completely ridiculous, and incredibly arrogant.
How about the RIAA forego what's in their interests, and help the business of companies like Allofmp3 and backbone providers..
How much money do you think the tier1 carriers make every year due to the amount of warez being transmitted over their lines? How dare the RIAA get in the way of their right to make profit.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
I want to write symphonies someday!
I've been a coder for twenty years. I have grown weary of it.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Maybe someone can verify that, but I read that in some areas (South America? Africa?) copying is so widespread that artists can't really make a living off their music. So what they do is they make praise songs about some politicians and other celebrities who pay them for the song.
:)
I could see that work, if the song is good. Then again, would you want to see the new smash hit "Bush is great"?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The music industry in China is quite sensible, music which is broadcast and free to anyone to listen to, they cannot also charge for (unless you want to pay for the physical CD etc ...)
We have this strange notion that music can be given away for free but is somehow also not public and can still be sold?
It's a bit like a book publisher letting anyone have a free copy of a book then complaining when people do not buy it
Puteulanus fenestra mortis
use java
Horns are really just a broken halo.
It is not given away free. It is a paid performance - the radio station that you are listing to has paid for it on your behalf. That royalty fee was paid on the agreement that the radio station only plays it to you once. If they play it a second time, they pay a second time. Just because you don't know that, doesn't make it yours.
Interesting - in many ways, we're seeing a return to medieval ideas of productivity and "intellectual property". Payment comes from a wealthy patron, not a wider audience. Works are distributed to anyone who has the means to copy them. Anonymity is not uncommon, especially for more controversial writings. Music earns money in performance. Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity. I think we could learn a lot from people like Chaucer and Dante.
A closed mouth gathers no foot.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Except the radio stations don't pay for it, they sometimes even get paid to put certain tracks on because the music execs quite rightly figured out nobody wants to pay for music that they have never heard of before.
Or at least that's how it is right now, lately the RIAA has been pushing to make them pay up. (source)
In a way isn't that why Google created Google Hack, to show sites, what content is floating out there, so they can secure it or pursue those who let their content sit out there for free.
Can I bum a sig?
that they give to their citizens.
you in the US think of Tibet as sovereign. China doesn't. It blocks the US telling its people otherwise.
RIAA thinks that any use of "their" IP without paying through the nose (and assorted orifices) is theft, so China, as a friend of the US, blocks the US from seeing it.
Where does shame come into it?
You bring up a good point to the piracy argument that I haven't seen debated before. I guess in the end it would be a waste of time because it would see the same fate as the rendition before it.
Can I bum a sig?
Multiple comments here on /. tells the music industry to adapt to the 'new world'. This is like throwing a lobster in boiling water, and telling it to adapt.
The business model for the music industry has always been:
1. Buy expensive recording and vinyl pressing machines.
(The price on this equipment gives them a de facto monopoly on production)
2. Pay musicians a song for their work (maybe this is where the expression comes from?)
3. Sell disks for as much PROFIT as possible
In the 'new world' there is no monopoly and ipso facto no music industry.
don't cut it off www.mgmbill.org
Opportunist: in some areas (South America? Africa?) copying is so widespread that artists can't really make a living off their music
It's that way in most of the world, really. I'd bet 99% of all musicians don't make a living off their music; they may look cool when they're playing in their bar band on Saturday night, but they're right back in the cubicle (or fishing boat, depending on your profession) with the rest of us on Monday.
We see and read about the rich musicians at the very top all the time, but they're a miniscule fraction of the entire music playing populace. It's obvious that the organizations responsible for all the copyright bruhaha are interested in protecting those few moneymakers at the top of the pile.
psychodelicacy: Re-working other people's material is not plagiarism, but a means of honouring one's predecessors, learning one's craft and encouraging creativity
This is a good point. The definition of plagiarism is subjective and like all things settled by litigation, usually favors the people with the most expensive lawyers (i.e. the top media/communications companies). It's been that way in pop music forever (a few good examples can be found in the book, Confessions of a Record Producer) -- one only has to look at the R&B (Black) music scene in the 1950s-70s to see how many ideas were illegally swiped and resold by people like Pat Boone.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." -- Donald Knuth
Pardon my ignorance, but can anyone explain why the music industry is in any position to "warn" advertisers to stop supporting another company?
It seems to me that the advertisers have the upper hand - they are a customer to the record labels, after all. Wouldn't the music industry's demands be akin to the convenience store down the street warning me not to buy milk from the grocery store? Sure, they could tell me that my business is no longer welcome if I ever to buy milk at the grocery store, but doing so would not be in their best interest.
[Cue sarcastic comments about RIAA arrogance...]
Can't say I'd have thought to use a chinese search engine otherwise
You just *know* than my other sig is funny...
Thanx for the link!! Kind of ironic for a country known for censorship.... who cares, keep dl'ing! :-)
Your story of depression for musicians is an artifact of not embracing new technologies and markets, but instead trying to sell your music within the framework set by the music industry. That approach is guaranteed to fail as it's stacked against independents. But there are alternatives.
In the virtual world of Second Life, many hundreds of musicians are performing live in 1-hour slots in front of audiences of up to 100 people (a system scalability limit), and that happens throughout the day, every day, in thousands of venues. It not only gives them exposure, but it also brings in hard cash through the tip jar and from direct music music sales. (Second Life's currency is convertible to and from US dollars.) And they make a living from it.
So things are not as bad as you portray them, as long as a musician is willing to leave the normal music industry channels and is not afraid to try something new.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
its al chinese to me...
I think the song title you meant to type was "Smash & Hit Bush. Great!"
I thought that radio stations had to pay license/broadcast fees and that would cover the whole music playing thing (depending on the license)?
which is totally what she said
By linking it to Baidu, now they can advertise their music to a larger audience. I don't see why any sane musician would be against this.
It's not that nobody is willing to pay for recorded music, it's that the product that American record companies tend to offer is crap. 5 minute tracks, usually they aren't all that good, I'll be glad when the current music industry falls so we can focus on the art again.
Music is not a product, it's art. A true masterpiece is priceless and will be paid for. An artist should get paid when CDs are being sold, however when music is shared thats advertising.
People aren't going to buy your albums or go to your concerts if they don't know who you are!
And Baidu is offering what seems to be free advertising. I hope Google copies this idea, because there is a fortune to be made by offering us the ability to search Google for music and buy concert tickets in a few clicks.
They do, they are called royalties I suppose. One can see a wee bit about BMI's here.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
For a start, advertising doesn't really pay big bucks any more. We've had companies flop during the peak of advertising money in the dot-con years with that model, what makes you think it's more viable now?
A quick search says that the Cost Per Click (i.e., what the advertising companies pay) can be as low as 1 cent per click. After the ad provider takes their share, it's even less money for the site carrying the ads. And that's per _click_. So if every single person downloading your music were to actually click a banner per song downloaded (fat chance) and the ad provider gave you the full cent (fat chance), you'd need to sell some thousands of songs per month just to pay for your hosting costs. Probably more, since you use bandwidth too.
Pay per view, even less. If you go really per view, expect it to be small fractions of a cent.
Remember, you're not Penny Arcade or PvP Online as a musician. You're not going to make a new song per day, and serve an ad or two with each one.
The RIAA members also provide one valuable service: they create a scarcity via marketing. There are hundreds of thousands of girls who can sing just as well as Britney Spears, and don't look much worse. But there's only one Britney Spears. And boy band members are even more dime a dozen, and chosen mostly on how well they look (i.e. how wet would they get a 16 year old girl seeing them on stage.) Not on any skills in composing that music or expressing anything profound. There are a few tens of million of young guys who'd be not much worse than, say, Backstreet Boys, and some would probably be only better.
So while it's easy to say "OMG, musician X is only getting a pittance out of the CD sales, and gets all the money out of concerts anyway," the more cruel reality is that musician X would be yet another _nobody_ without the publisher. Maybe a thousand people would know about his music, and maybe a dozen of them could be arsed to show up at a concert.
To put it otherwise, it's an economy of massive overproduction. If left to the free market, you'd be about as able to make a money out of music as you'd make money out of your farm in 1929. When there's 10 times more produced than anyone needs, and the products are perfectly interchangeable, the price doesn't just go 10 times lower. It spirals down to the point where nobody can make a living out of it.
Now I'm not saying it's necessarily the best model for society, but that's how it works.
And the moral of the story is: well, maybe a better model can be found, but it will have to be a better one than, basically, "but I want them to work for me for a tenth of a cent in ads." Artists don't make music to profit from record sales. Record companies profit from record sales.
Artists profit from ticket sales. If you combine a search engine for music with a ticket subscription service system, artists will get rich, the search engine will get rich, and everyone wins. Mp3.com has the right idea, thats why they put mp3.com out of business.
It's not good to allow a small group of people to stifle the development of a technology. This is just like with Microsoft, it holds software development back entirely. Look at what IE did to the web when it had monopoly status.
Finally Firefox has challenged it. And now we have an entirely new web 2.0 and 3.0 etc.
I find myself siding with the music mafia. Not in the "Piracy" sense but in the "boycott" sense.
I'd like nothing better than to boycott Baidu. Their Baidu Spiders arrive in hordes and spend hours crawling my site. They ignore crawl-delays and denies. They're looking for online poker files that were placed there by some illustrious Chinese citizen or other in an attempt to deface my website about two months ago. That lasted about four hours (from the middle of the night, local time, until I woke up next morning and made it go away), but I'm still dealing with the Baidu invasion. They're worse than Genghis Khan. An attempt to contact the email address provided resulted in a bounce stating that my ISP (Comcast) is blocked in China. My next step will probably be simply to block any contact with Baidu at all, and I've been tempted to extend that to the whole of China.
So while I generally deplore the actions of the Music Mafia, my perception is that Baidu has invited the actions by their own behavior, which is by no means above reproach.
"Here's what's happening. You're starting to drive like your Dad..." - Red Green
...wait...what is that little chinese policeman doing at the bottom of my screen?
If you quote this signature there'll be 72 copies of Windows ME waiting for you in Heaven.
You don't put your music on a website to attract visitors so you can earn that puny ad revinue. You put your music on a web site to sell CDs.
I'm not going to buy your CD unless I like the music on it. I can't like music I've never heard. The MP# is the advertising for the CD. Yes, many (maybe even most) will download the MP3 and not buy the CD, but you've lost nothing. Many, maybe most, didn't like the music. They're not going to buy your CD whether they download the MP3 or hear it on the radio.
If the RIAA really had a problem with free music they'd not let it be played on the radio.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
Or timbaland blatently nicking a C64 version of an Amiga demo scene soundtrack. And getting away with it because he is part of the mafIAA.
Try searching "falun gong" on Baidu and tell me if you get any search results. That alone is enough reason for me to boycott that search engine.
So what they do is they make praise songs about some politicians and other celebrities who pay them for the song.
Hmmm... I recall hearing rock and roll music that used to be in the top 40 as background music for car commercials. Seems one politician had a Fleetwood Mac song as their theme one year, another had a John Meloncafuckit Icantspellit COUGAR song as his.
I swear that one Van Halen song sounds like a jingle for soda pop (and I've always liked most of their stuff)
I better check the map to make sure I'm not in SOUTH America...
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
I have a few close personal friends who do make a living off playing music, but it always becomes fairly hectic... you always have to be gigging to stay afloat. The thing is, most musicians who are not famous and touring end up doing a lot of teaching, which usually pays quite well, depending on the community. Sure, that's sort of an office job, but it's not quite the same as an IT guy or paper pusher.
Along with many others, I am a firm supporter of using records as advertisements for live shows. That said, it does require a good deal of money to record, produce, manufacture, and distribute an album. Happily, that's where the internet can come in doubly handy: it obviates manufacture and enables near-costless distribution (via P2P).
To be honest, I think that a lot of the record industry's problems could be solved if they improved the quality and lowered the cost of online music. Many people (myself included) pirate music from time to time because it's a) relatively easily available, and b) free. If there were a legitimized version of MP3Sparks charging the same prices, I think the record companies would see a lot more online sales. I am loathe to spend $12 on a new CD, especially in crappy 128 or 160kbps MP3 format, but give me 256k or lossless for $5 per CD and I'd start buying up a whole collection. Make it part of a social network community with easy music suggestion and you've got a goldmine.
Did you see the pool? They flipped the bitch!
I'll add my own personal experience, for what it's worth - and I agree, it really isn't that simple.
I decided to make an attempt at making some money, and hopefully some day making a living (pipe dream), off of all the music that I write. I, like many, figured the old way of doing things was dead, the net is the future, and what works for others should work for me. I decided to apply the webcomic business model to music. I write a song every month, post it for free, and you can, if you are so inclined, buy some merchandise to support my efforts. The back catalog is all available to anyone, and I make a couple other inconsequential updates between songs to keep the site alive and active more than once every thirty days.
So, a couple years back, I setup my website (shameless self promotion), and I started rolling with the project. What's working in my favor:
* I've got a MySpace page, complete with all the similar musical artists friended.
* I took out some advertising on what I figured would be the most relevant (affordable) website, Questionable Content.
* I do plenty of forum posting (read: free advertising), and had a few friends and some interest in my music before the site was launched due to that.
A couple caveats, to be honest and fair about this:
* I honestly do not write even remotely commercial music; it's instrumental, and it's somewhat experimental. It's not mainstream.
* My T-shirt and web design may or may not be the best; those are not my strengths.
* I don't update absolutely every month. Right now it's working out to about two on, one off, but I've had some longer on streaks.
* I could play the MySpace / LastFM angle harder than I do, I suppose.
* I don't play live. Probably the single biggest dent in this whole thing, and likely by a good margin.
So, no, I'm not poised to take over the internet and become the next Arctic Monkeys, and while I certainly daydreamed about such things, I was mainly hoping to cover costs, and maybe even make enough to purchase another effects pedal or even a new instrument. My total haul from not quite two years of all of this? Not enough to cover the domain name for a single year. Hell, even if the merchandise was completely cost-less to produce and I made 100% profit on it (Cafepress certainly takes plenty), I would still be in the red. Take out items bought by my friends and that would be even more true.
Honestly, a record contract is looking better and better the more I try to go it alone (this isn't my only musical project ever, either).
I'm not saying that because it doesn't work for me, it won't work for anyone, but it's not as simple or as easy as one might think. The net isn't the answer to everything, and the old guard isn't completely irrelevant or without its advantages. Going with a new, cutting edge model of distribution does not equal success, nor does it equal easy or guaranteed money. It doesn't necessarily even equal any money.
The page is useless. All the links are in Chinese!
George Bush Doesn't Like Black People (this was a very popular song shortly after Hurricane Katrina).
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
www.tagoo.ru great site for finding obscure mp3s from obscure sources like Doctor Demento and Billy and the Boingers, stuff that you cant buy even if you wanted to.
Seattle is a lot of things, but it's not South America.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Maybe someone can verify that, but I read that in some areas (South America? Africa?) copying is so widespread that artists can't really make a living off their music. So what they do is they make praise songs about some politicians and other celebrities who pay them for the song.
But that would mean piracy has some sort of negative aspect, which is heresy around here. The truth is when piracy gets rampant enough it really does inhibit creativity and stop good music from happening, and anyone who believes different is just wrong. Yes, the music companies are unethical, and yes, they screw over the artists, but to completely remove intellectual property protection would screw over the artists a lot more.
This is a good point. The definition of plagiarism is subjective and like all things settled by litigation, usually favors the people with the most expensive lawyers (i.e. the top media/communications companies). It's been that way in pop music forever (a few good examples can be found in the book, Confessions of a Record Producer) -- one only has to look at the R&B (Black) music scene in the 1950s-70s to see how many ideas were illegally swiped and resold by people like Pat Boone.
Removing intellectual property completely would mean this would become a lot more widespread. Popular musicians would have no problems in just stealing songs from lesser known ones, and local clubs and bars would be filled with roving agents with recorders.
The RIAA is the recording industry ass. of America.
maybe they should form an RIAPRC. oh wait, china's laws don't permit that sort of group.
too bad RIAA, you fail.
They're using their grammar skills there.
When will they learn that bringing attention to these things. It's like when they helped pirate bay's traffic increase. Now everyone who didn't know they could use Baidu to find music does.
www.ianhoar.com My blog about geeking out.
it's this simple:
bandname rapidshare site:blogspot.com
If you don't want to advertise to music lovers who have extra money to spend since they're not wasting it on overpriced CD's then by all means boycott.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Those musicians at the top also charge over $1,000 per concert ticket for the best seats. They can also get expensive 6 figure and 7 figure concert gigs for private corporate picnic parties.
And who sends out more copies of music than the musicians themselves through radio broadcasts? How many times everyday do they copy the same Top 40 song on the same radio station?
For top musician talent selling 20,000 seat arenas, even if ticket prices average as little as $20 you should be clearing more money per performance than the average worker clears in a year.
How much money do pretty girls walking down the street make per year from men "stealing" their image into their eyes? That's no different than copying any imaginary property.
The existence of paid cable television stations proves that people are willing to pay for content in advance of the content being created. Do you know what you're going to watch in the future? Specific episodes? Boring or exciting news broadcasts? Are refunds ever offered if the content subjectively "sucks"? Nope. This goes for subscriptions, events like concerts, and all sorts of content which cannot be evaluated before paying, like video games, software programs, books.
It's a *miracle* any of this imaginary property obtains value in the first place. Creators complain they can't make a living without copyright protection, but how the hell does anyone ever pay for that content without receiving a significant portion of it for free in advance? It's literally a game of Monty selling boxes that might contain something good or might contain absolutely nothing at all. It's the same old hustle of con artists and circus promoters. But suddenly the price being charged vastly exceeded the present expected value of consumers. Consumers were ripped off far too much for far too long with the pushing of crap and filler, which was just mostly copying the advancements of the few greats anyway.
Yet look at entertainment thriving in the world of professional sports, which is making entertainer athletes richer than ever before. The difference between football players and musicians is football players go to work a lot more during the year, and copyright isn't market interfering inducing a huge percentage of the population to try to seriously make their living by playing football.
Music has just been plagued by terrible marketing and inefficient middlemen dinosaurs. Why aren't music concerts shown on television as much as sporting events? Because the music industry marketing "sucks" and their product has been undercut on price and exceeded on quality by competing entertainment forms.
Yet notice how copyright applies to even professional sports. Is this really constitutionally justified promotion of the advancement of the arts and sciences? Hell no. And disrespect for all forms of imaginary property government protectionism has been thus earned.
Copyright isn't even at all needed for content creators to make a living. How the hell are they affording the ability to create art in the first place if they aren't paid in full in advance? Obviously, there is a lie and a contradiction in the false incentives artists decry copyright is necessary for delivering. For if they can create art without being paid first, then copyright does jack squat for the creation of that art. And if they can be sufficiently paid in advance to produce, then copyright is completely unnecessary.
"From DNA to P2P, we are all Copycats now. Go Go Copycat Power! Copycat Powers activate! Form of, a Copycat." --monxrtr
Then again, would you want to see the new smash hit "Bush is great"? :)
I think Toby Keith made that song already.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Close.
I say there is still money to be made in the music industry.
The RIAA can promote a band to the point that they have much more than 1,000 fans, and much more than 12 who will show up for a concert. The RIAA can share in the profits with the band.
As I keep saying, we've got a better distribution model, so I don't see why we need the RIAA to do that part for us anymore.
Now, instead of using video's/radio to promote albums, bands can use albums to promote live shows.
If'n you wanna make money, ya gotta work for it, just like I do.
Oh no. Erica Baidu's gonna be pissed at being called a pirate.
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Thank you slashdot for a better way to find mp3's, this is awesome!
Now that's more of the degeneracy I've come to expect of typical first page slashdot posting, and AC at that -- and of course, Score:5...totally hilarious...
Call it what it is, it's the copyright cartel.
Now, I respect the fact that they have the rights, however, I don't agree with how they do business and I'd do things differently.
How many Chinese people still have a computer (or a home) to download onto or listen from. I think the idea that we could make money selling our products into the Chinese economy may be temporarily on hold. At the moment I am sending money via the red cross for stuff like tents and water, not cdr blanks and mp3 players. Some parts of China may still be ok, but major sections are not. I am surprised there is anything left of the chinese stock market.
The great hit, "Smash Bush".
Lets see. The DHS declares pirate music a source of terrorist money, then the mafiaa can use the warrantless wiretapping of telecoms/isps to scan for music downloads from baidu.
But considering the software that's produced in that area it sure is way behind in development.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Um, I'm sorry, are you being funny or just American? If the latter, print out a map of the world, cut out China and superimpose it on the USA. Thank you.
Frantactical Fruke, I wasn't trying to be funny. I am American. What I was trying to say was that the impact of Baidu on the pirate music scene is probably not that great right now because the disaster in China has probably had a huge impact on the percentage of Chinese that are still in position to jump on their computers and download copyrighted content. Normally I have disdain for China as a country with a common disregard for copyrighted material, but I am trying to get past that right now and be more compassionate. I don't really understand your posting. In regard to the article, the importance of the Baidu home page and its link is probably reduced on the basis of current events. This is what I was trying to say. What were you trying to say? I don't do well with subtlety.
AltaVista has a prominent link on its home page for "MP3/Audio" searches. I don't see the RIAA taking them on.
98% of America's teens drink alcohol, smoke, and have sex. Put this in your sig if you like bagels.
You have a misconception about the scale of earthquakes. China is as big as the USA. While the earthquake did affect a lot of people, since China is four times as populous as the USA, it was still no more significant than hurricane Katrina in America. If there could be an earthquake that could bring all of China to a standstill, it would rattle your windows in America.
Your problem is that you think newscasts present a complete picture of a country. They only report what is unusual. In Shanghai, Beijing and Hong Kong life goes on as usual, so the news report nothing about them. Old reporter saying: "Good news is no news."
And my apologies for the condescending tone. I'm sure you have received a great education. It's not your fault that American schools teach nothing about the outside world - or so it seems.