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Crookes, RIAA, MPAA, ICE — 'Linking Is Publishing'
newtley writes "What do Canada's Wayne Crookes, the Big 4's RIAA, Hollywood's MPAA and brand new ICE agent Andrew Reynolds have in common? They all claim linking is the same as publishing. Crookes is using it to demand Canada's Supreme Court effectively shut down the net in Canada. With the RIAA and MPAA providing the 'initiative,' the Obama government is using Andrews [read ICE — US Immigration and Customs Enforcement] to try to shut down innocent sites for, and on behalf of, Hollywood and Big Music. The sites are 'accused of contributing to online piracy, and it was essential for the domain names to be seized without a trial and without giving the sites a chance to respond. Why? Such sites are 'destroying the US economy.' Forget about legally appointed courts, proof or due process. Hollywood and Big Music rule."
Companies which at least attempt to adapt to the changing market seem to be doing ok...
Interesting.
I guess that means that every single time the US Government has mentioned Wikileaks at press conferences they have themselves published all the documents available at Wikileaks?
I mean - mentioning the name of a website while talking, that's pretty much the same as linking in writing.
I guess Wikileaks is off the hook for publishing the documents then ...
All newspapers are guilty of robbery, murder, rape or any other of the crimes they report in their pages, at least according to this logic.
According to the RIAA:
That gives us a 2008 estimate of 12 billion dollars in revenue for retail sale of music. Presumably for the RIAA, who "create, manufacture and/or distribute approximately 85% of all legitimate sound recordings produced and sold in the United States". So a total of about $14.2 billion in revenue.
Now, obviously we also need to take the MPAA into consideration. Again, using 2008 numbers:
Ticket sales grossed about $10 billion. And since quite a lot of people seem to claim (and no, I have no source handy) that home video sales is about the same as ticket sales, then we're looking at around $20 billion in 2008.
Apple's revenue for 2008 in the Americas was $14.5 billion. Granted, that's a larger geographical area than RIAA's numbers, but then again Apple is a relatively small company in the IT landscape.
How about some of the bigger fish?
IBM reported revenue of $103.6 billion, and pre-tax profit of $16.7 billion.
So, the movie and music industry combined gets up to around $35 billion in 2008 in the US.
IBM (world wide) - $103 billion
Apple (Americas) - $14.5 billion
Google (world wide) - $21.8 billion
Microsoft (world wide?) - $60.4 billion
Oracle (world wide?) - 22.4 billion
Dell (world wide?) - 61 billion
Seriously - why the fuck are the IT giants just turning their back on the complete and utter gang rape on things like the Internet, when most of their products would die off the moment it stops working the way it should.
Just buy out the fuckers, boot the executives, lawyers, assistants etc. from their penthouse offices (literally boot them out over the balcony) and just kill off these massively debilitating parasites.
I'm an older guy who can afford to buy cd's and stuff.
I choose not to, though. I'm one of those who has had enough bullshit from big media and now ACTIVELY WANTS TO SEE THEM GO BANKRUPT.
I no longer view pirates as kids with no money; I view them as equalizers in the new david and goliath struggle.
I also buy used cd's so that no money goes back to the media companies. the last new cd I bought was probably over 10 years ago.
"meet the new customer; NOT the same as the old customer!" /apologies to The Who
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."