Slashdot Mirror
RIAA Now Blames Journalists For Its Piracy Trouble
adeelarshad82 writes "RIAA executives have written a letter to PCMag expressing 'deep disappointment' for publishing an article on Limewire Alternatives. While the article includes a disclaimer from PCMag that it does not condone the download of copyrighted or illegal material, RIAA executives believe that 'PCMag is slyly encouraging people to steal more music.' The letter goes on to ask PCMag to retract the article from their website. PCMag's Editor in Chief has responded to the letter by stating that music industry's charges remain groundless and that it reeks of desperation. He points out that PCMag covers all aspects of technology, which includes the products, services and activities that some groups and individuals might deem objectionable. He defends publishing the article by saying 'We covered these Limewire alternatives because we knew they would be of interest to our readers. We understand that some might use them to illegally download content. We cannot encourage that action, but also cannot stop it. Reporting on the existence of these services does neither.' PCMag has also refused to retract the article."
In this day and age if your still using limewire or its alternatives for the majority of your music your doing it wrong.
I'll have to check out PCMag and see if it's worth subscribing to.
^^vv<><>BA
More illegal downloading = more lawsuits = more profit for the RIAA. They make more from someone who is forced to settle than they make from someone who buys the song on iTunes.
Heaven forbid someone should use radio waves for transmitting illegal information! Or, even worse, terrorists might call each other! Let's forbid the very mention of phones and radios too!
Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
Shouldn't the RIAA be going after them for reviewing CD burners that can burn copied files? Or for reviewing software that rips .mp3 files or .wav files from audio CDs? Shouldn't PC Mag and all other publications be restricted from writing about anything that could potentially assist in copying music?
PCMag is as much motivated by economic considerations as the RIAA. The difference is that PCMag is informing its readership and generating publicity for itself, while the RIAA is advertising its rent-seeking behavior and ignorance of the Internet. There is no way the article could be "unpublished" even if PCMag were to comply with these notorious intellectual monopolists.
PCMag is not a music magazine. If it were, there would be ground for such contention; blaming PCMag is saying that a medical journal is pornographic. But then again, the "music industry" isn't at all about music and is not as much concerned about delivering music as it is about owning all the content that exists out there.
It was that day the RIAA decided to put a jihad on PCMag. And if you keep posting this, they'll put a jihad on /. too.
Speaking of which, I am hereby putting everyone on notice who has ever mod'ed me down, that they have cause me emotional distress and based upon the mathematical formulas that the RIAA uses, I will be suing you for
One hundred billion dollars for each moderation. But, we can settle now for just $50,000.
RIP America
July 4, 1776 - September 11, 2001
Southpark got it correct. They might as well blame Canada.
PCMag has also refused to retract the article.
+5 Doing the Right Thing
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
To be fair, the summary doesn't claim that "RIAA Now Blames Journalists For Its Piracy Trouble". Rather, the RIAA is merely saying "you aren't helping". To use an analogy, if a magazine published an article on how to get past airport security with a bomb, that doesn't mean anyone would say "we blame [magazine X] for our terrorism problem" (as if it's the one and only reason for terrorism on airplanes), but you could certainly see how they aren't helping things.
I wish Slashdot was a little more objective in reporting the news, instead of just spinning the story in a sensationalist way to confirm what people want to hear.
So writing an article about P2P programs is encouraging the stealing of music?
I guess, by the same logic, that automobile magazines encourage drunk driving and gun magazines encourage murder.
There's no scientific consensus that life is important.
RIAA artists slyly encouraging ( underage sex | adultery | drive-by shooting | etc... )
You get the idea. Interesting how a certain media group displays a shocking ignorance of their own industry and the industries immediately adjacent to it.
From the TFA: We wanted to send a direct response to the letter writers, but they failed to include a return address.
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
The RIAA is acting like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
Not that I sympathetic to the RIAA, they do have a bit of a point.
They claim sly encouragement, but I see it more like the information itself may expose new ideas to people who may previously had little knowledge about filesharing or how easy it is to get shit for free that you would normally have to pay for. The knowledge presented may even be benign: a tepid comparison of webcam chat sites. If someone didn't know about webcam chat sites before, boy howdy, they sure do now and might even decide to have a look. Torrent sites were out years before I heard about them, let alone heard about them being used for "illegal filesharing" from anyone (naive was I), and once I did, let me tell you I downloaded a heckload of Ubuntu ISOs.
Of course, it doesn't even matter what PCMag says. If PCMag told readers outright that illegal filesharing is all kinds of wrong and the legal hassle and punishments may be severe indeed, people would still do it.
"Don't do drugs." "What are drugs? I have some learning to do!"
Why not blame Google for makeing it easy for people to find info on how to download music.
Are PCMag true and mighty freedom warriors, or do they just want to make sure you are always able to 'preview' (and then delete of course) *their* (pirated) magazine copy instead of competitors' ?
If I were an advertiser, I would be more interested in the stats of such downloads than the stats of printed circulation.
And now the analysis by Epic Fail Records executive Brit74:
How you read that and concluded that they weren't blaming the PC Mag article is beyond me, but rest assured that there is no way around the simple fact that the RIAA is beyond a shadow of a doubt blaming PC Mag for "harm done" by "encouraging stealing".
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Evidently one can become a recording industry executive in an English-speaking country without understanding the meaning of a simple word like "steal".
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
the RIAA is declared a terrorist organisation and all it's executive dragged off to Git-mo the better off the world, and the music industry, will be.
I'm pretty sure that it introduced me to internet porn back around 1994/1995. My dad was a subscriber to the magazine, and while flipping through an issue I saw an article about recommended porn sites. Interestingly the one that caught my eye was actually amateur erotic fiction. Anyway, at the time it never occurred to me that it might be strange to see an endorsement for a porn site in a mainstream computer magazine. Thus, I can't find myself entirely surprised at an article about file-sharing networks.
Yeah, that'll get you good press. Insult the media. Brilliant!
Or is that...
Profit!!
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Oh how I hate dishonesty. I believe that the people behind this magazine published the article with the sole intention of pointing their readers to other sources of pirated material. Now when challenged, they play coy. Cowards. They should at least defend their action for what it was, rather than tucking their tails between their legs and pleading innocence. Journalists have died to defend the freedom of the press, and now these charlatans abuse that freedom by hiding their duplicitous actions behind the good name of journalism.
I'd like to provide my feedback to both parties in this. I found the email addresses of a couple people at PCMAG that I could write to an express my views. So far, I have found NO email addresses of ANY of the executives who wrote that letter to PCMAG (as seen on Billboard).
My conclusion is clear. PCMAG has at least some interest in what its readers, and the general public, think about this. But the music industry executives clearly have no interest in what people think. They have their heads in the sand. They have some idea of what product they want to deliver, and all they want is to push it so hard that people will just accept it.
I really just wanted to ask them ... personally ... and that means NOT some secretary answering ... I want to hear directly from these executives themselves since they think their names are so important ... just where I can BUY music that will work for me (beyond what Magnatune has). Do they even consider me to be part of their target market? I have some serious doubts. And I bet a lot of people do, now.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
not just proclaiming our geek cred by poopooing poor p2p client choices
therefore, we need slashdot wisdom on THE filesharing client to use, for those reading this who are not in the know, and to generally get to know what everyone else is doing
thusly:
1. eMule for hard to get and nonessential downloads
2. bittorrent for easy pop stuff. use the Opera internet browser as a bittorrent client
disagree with what i just wrote?
then respond, with your own pointers to expand on our group wisdom
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
US, imma only tell you dis once: You is stupid! (derp d'oh dat dat d'oh)
And for ya money I'm grabbin like I'm Keith Rupert! (Murdoch dat dat ho!)
Give me cash for my CDs
and aac's and crap mp3's
You're like a candy store
And I'm a toddlor
You got me suing more and mo- mo- more
For your dough, your dough etc.
-- RIAA
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
PCMag should be careful even though they are seemingly correct. These are lawyers who may be fishing for more legitimate reasons to sue and the language the magazine uses in its response may make it even more of a target. I wish them the best and hope they do not provoke more opportunistic lawsuits.
Why not blame Google for makeing it easy for people to find info on how to download music.
Google has the power to make the bands your label is promoting effectively "disappear" from the web by removing them from indexing. They could also ban your label from adwords, crippling your marketing efforts severely. No, it is best not to anger Google if you are in the music business (or indeed any business that relies upon Google services to connect with customers).
Our *musing* bodes both our thoughts complementary to this regression.
>>It's odd how don't you think is really a contraction for do you not think? or do you think not?, but definitely not, do not you think?
Thanks again RIAA. Due to your grumping, I might not have ever found the PCMag site and article (not that it was that newsworthy, I already knew about all the apps listed), but I digress: without the grumping, Slashdot would never have posted the grump, and now since they did, and with the joy of the Streisand effect(tm), we can all have our noses pointed to that article. So a tip of the hat to the RIAA. You screwed up again. Some argue that your members are too stubborn to change their business model, but I disagree; they are too stupid to change their business model. Some might say the reason for not changing is pointless, but I disagree. Failure to see the Streisand effect(tm) coming, means that more innovation will truly force your members to change their business model (or perish). Think of their business plans going the way of camera film. The writing is on the wall.
Looking at Urban Dictionary and Wikipedia, WP's mention of "Error Control Coding" seems to be the only definition of the acronym that fits the context.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
It's "when the COMPETITION threatens a lawsuit, you must be doing something right", not "not when the person/company whose stuff you're ripping off threatens a lawsuit, you must be doing something right".
A much better alternative would be if EMI were actually able to market their products in a sustainable way.
Yeah, if the major labels behaved better I wouldn't mind their continued existence. If they're selling stuff I actually want to listen to, that is in and of itself a sign of progress, and I'll buy that stuff from them.
"Warner, EMI, hear me clearly. Universal Music, update your circuitry" - MC Lars, Download This Song
If EMI goes belly-up, would we end up with a situation analogous to abandonware in the software world?
Sure, someone would make use of the cream-of-the-crop of EMI copyrights (including but certainly not limited to the copyrights relating to a certain quartet from Liverpool), but I can see a lot of lesser stuff going under the radar.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I figure other labels would snap up much of the material from an EMI collapse, and handle it much like how they handle what they have currently.
Logically, other companies in the industry are often well-positioned to buy the industry-specific assets of fallen competitors (for example, in the financial mess, surviving banks snapped up much of the stuff from failed banks).
It would be a cheap(er) way for other labels to expand, they already have complementary distribution infrastructure, et cetera.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Actually, I don't mind them doing this. In their desperation, they've just walked out of their Mom's basement without their pants on, with a picket-poster in hand saying "goobbly-booh". I feel so happy when idiots get frustrated and start flapping around helplessly. The societal equivalent of natural selection will take care of them.
Oh and, I am going to start replacing all my insulting curse-words (e.g., douchebag) with "RIAA".
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=569
Also reminded of this line from MC Lars' "Download This Song":
Epic's up in my face like, "Don't steal our songs Lars,"
While Sony sells the burners that are burning CD-R's
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Who says downloading, or making copies for private use is illegal? It depends on where you are.
In many countries, people are forced to pay fees on blank CDs, on printers, on copy machines, even on the memory in MP3 players. Why? The justification for these fees is that people do, in fact, make copies of copyrighted media. Irritating: whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? More irritating: extraordinarily little of this money actually makes it to the artists.
A very few countries got it right: "if our consumers must pay these fees, because you assume they are copying, then they have paid for the right to copy, and this must then be legal". Two countries that I am aware of: Switzerland and Italy. As I understand the law in these two countries (IANAL), uploading is illegal, as is making copies for sale. However, making copies for private use is legal, and this includes both downloading and also making individual copies for friends. The claim that downloading is illegal is therefore disingenuous. The MAFIAA would like for it to be illegal, but it depends on your jurisdiction.
Does anyone know of other countries where downloading is legal? Or have more specific information on the situation in Switzerland and Italy?
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
It's interesting how one of history's biggest monsters (Stalin) was on the good side of a war effort against one of history's other biggest monsters (Hitler)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yeah, sometimes it takes big companies with contrary interests to successfully stand up to other big companies.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
+1 Funny for your variant of the "copyright infringement != theft" theme.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
...for standing up for their beliefs. And for not giving in to threats.
Wish I could say the same for the useless elected politicians though.
They've already tried that. What happens is that Google removes the offending link from their index and replaces it with a link to the letter they received asking them to remove it.
Then, should Googlebot decide to put it back next time it crawls the web, well that's something Google has no control over.
Go back to the source and sue ARPA for making all this possible.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
That is the nice thing about capitalism. Also, they aready tried blamming Google, but US justice system isn't that much biased yet.
Rethinking email
Magazines that talk about P2P softwares don't encourage me to steal music. Talentless hacks who can't sing without heavy autotuning encourage me to give the RIAA the finger and steal music.
Apparently the RIAA is upset that we aren't using the far more encompassing MPAA piracy list instead.
http://www.mpaa.org/Resources/fdff7027-1a9e-46dc-9a80-7cf20aa1b686.pdf
Yes, it's real, and right off of the MPAA site, lol! Skip to page 3 for the list. There's honestly some stuff in there I didn't know about, like kino.to
There are, of course, some after-effects. Despite its popularity with others during that era, the "Hitler 'stache" is pretty much considered bad taste to have nowadays in many places.
Best combination of TNG and lolcat humor I've ever read!
Yeah, sometimes it takes big companies with contrary interests to successfully stand up to other big companies.
That is the nice thing about capitalism.
Only if the bigger company is on the right side.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
The MAFIAA would like for it to be illegal, but it depends on your jurisdiction.
If you're talking about the Motion Picture Industry Association of America or the Recording Industry Association of America I think you'll find a clue to their jurisdiction in the name.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Sorry, but magazines like PC Mag, Ars Technica and many other websites which help and foster online piracy are a big part of the problem. You don't have them helping software piracy because that will hurt their advertising, but it is popular with their audience to steal music, movies and TV. So that is why they are doing it. This is a big double standard, to help and foster creative piracy. Not even turning a blind eye, but to help and tell people how to pirate, also to literally support anti-copyright policies. Sorry, but this is a big part of the problem. Artists, filmmakers and more need their rights protected. not for people to be stealing more. here you have people saying ridiculous things like "notorious intellectual monopolists" ... what does that even mean or stand for? it is BS !!
Songwriters, artists, labels and more deserve to get paid for their hard work, same for movies, comics and other realms. For noob/idiots to simply say the business model of creating art or entertainment is broken, artists are getting "stolen" from and more is crazy, wrong and just a stupid justication for their stealing, breaking laws and hurting the people they like the creativity of.
Sorry, but website blocking, domain taking back and finding new ways of blocking p2p networks is sounding very appealing right around now. Very real people are getting hurt by IP theft.
They don't need the RIAA anymore. Marian Call just recently did a 50 state tour on her own (She only has Hawaii left to perform in and she'll be there around Christmas). She performed at Wootstocks in NYC and in Boston.
UPS Sucks
Now won't PCMag be happy about all this publicity...
http://dilbert.com/2010-12-13
I guess that's what I was referring to with my 'with contrary interests' phrasing
Another example: Apple, in the interest of selling consumer electronics, talked the major labels into DRM-free paid downloads.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I was being ironic: the market cannot solve all problems. I'm in favor of trademarks--a big government sponsored social program for business. I'm also in favor of copyright reform. For a reference on intellectual monopoly, I suggest Against Intellectual Monopoly a free online text by economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine. I also recommend their web site Against Monopoly. Intellectual monopoly is the exclusive "...right to control how purchasers make use of an idea or creation." This refers to all copies of an idea or creation. Boldrin and Levine assert that "not only should the property rights of innovators be protected but also the rights of those who have legitimately obtained a copy of the idea, directly or indirectly, from the original innovator." It is an empirical and not an ideological question whether and to what extent creators should "...have the right to control how purchasers make use of an idea or creation." The evidence I've seen is that copyrights and patents overwhelmingly favor moneyed interests at the expense of innovators and at significant social cost.
And I will generally react favourably toward their advertising clients. Anybody who stands up to those bastards will get a chunk of my business.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
Well... I think Netflix, Pandora, Hulu and the like have shown that people are perfectly willing to embrace legal, paid-for media when it is available. However, in Europe and most of the world these services don't exist. And to watch the newest *anything* in these parts of the world, Bittorrent is the only option. iTunes and similar models meanwhile are bullshit. Why should I pay $1 or more per track when I could actually be paying less for the physical CD? Why aren't the savings in infrastructure passed on to the consumer? Or put another way, where is all the excess money going? Here's a hint: not to the artist. As for pirating software, a lot of it that is simply ridiculously overpriced. Adobe products come to mind. But anyway.... It's the big players' own fault for not delivering decent content delivery mechanisms. They need to get with the program. That is all.
I (foolishly, it turns out) came here expecting a discussion about the stupidity of the RIAA. Instead I discover a 250 message thread about grammar. Fucking ridiculous. This site is getting more and more annoying.
PCMag should immediately and publicly (ie. loudly) demand an apology from the RIAA.
Self indulgent self promotion here: Excuse me, but please support me; a regular poster and poor independent musician/producer! http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/eatingbetty3 http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/eatingbetty2 http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/eatingbetty http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/bigshiny Also available on iTunes, Amazon, EMusic etc. Just google Eating Betty or ACEtone Studio Free stuff at sig below. Help! I'm too small to succeed!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
Who says downloading, or making copies for private use is illegal? It depends on where you are.
In many countries, people are forced to pay fees on blank CDs, on printers, on copy machines, even on the memory in MP3 players. Why? The justification for these fees is that people do, in fact, make copies of copyrighted media. Irritating: whatever happened to the presumption of innocence? More irritating: extraordinarily little of this money actually makes it to the artists.
A very few countries got it right: "if our consumers must pay these fees, because you assume they are copying, then they have paid for the right to copy, and this must then be legal". Two countries that I am aware of: Switzerland and Italy. As I understand the law in these two countries (IANAL), uploading is illegal, as is making copies for sale. However, making copies for private use is legal, and this includes both downloading and also making individual copies for friends. The claim that downloading is illegal is therefore disingenuous. The MAFIAA would like for it to be illegal, but it depends on your jurisdiction.
Does anyone know of other countries where downloading is legal? Or have more specific information on the situation in Switzerland and Italy?
In the Netherlands downloading music is not illegal, uploading without permission is. We also have a blank CD/DVD fee.
Joost
I wish that more DJ's were like you, and had some degree of autonomy.
Right now Edmonton, Alberta is a market of a bit over a million people. We have 20+ radio stations.
Country western (new style) 4-5
Oldie Goldie Pop 3-4
Rock 3
Multicultural 1 (dutch, chinese, ukranian, ... )
Access Radio multiple music formats, -- jazz, classical, folk.
CBC radio -- english & french. 3
So it's not too bad.
One of the pop/oldie stations has a 'no repeat workday' And it's true. They don't repeat during the day. But the same 40 or 50 songs come back again on Tuesday.
I don't know how the radio market works. I'd love to know how they decide what to put on:
Example: That pop/oldie station has ONE Neil Diamond song in it's rotation. This is a guy who had more than one hit. Why is only one played.
Example: Enya's "Orinoco Flow" got air time -- lots of air time when it came out. Why would any radio station only play the one song? Enya puts out a record every few years. Surely there is more than one that deserves air time.
Lorenna McKennit has had two songs on the pop charts, "The Bonny Swans" and "Mummer's Dance" She sells out audiences at our folk festival every year. But other air time?
Two other fav's of mine, Stan Rogers and James Keelaghan get no air time at all other than an occasional play on CBC.
I don't get it. Why are there not more stations like Access which have actual time slots of classical, folk, jazz, alternative? Why aren't there stations with the 'no repeat work month?'
Third Career: Tree Farmer Second Career: Computer Geek First Career: Teacher, Outdoor Instructor, Photographer.
"If the intention is clear" is the imperative part.
We Slashdot readers are a diverse bunch. Some of us have worse command of the English language than others and the cues that good grammar provides help us understand the intention better (or quicker).
English is my third language. When I read a grammatically malformed post, I often have to pause and "re-parse" it to make sure that I understood it correctly -- sort of like reading non-idiomatic code in the programming language of your choice. I do get your meaning but it may take more time.
In short, using good grammar is just polite, like saying "please" and "thank you".
PS,
The above applies tenfold for splitting a sentence between the subject and the comment body. If I had a bullet for every person that does that...
They tried to do that several times when they realized the possible money to be made. The RIAA was all but laughed at by the courts.