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Canadian Recording Industry Ass'n Lets DJs use MP3s
Yannick writes "Wired is reporting that Canadian [mobile] DJs are now (legally) permitted to use MP3s in their 'performances'. Seems that there's CA$200 cover charge (and further fees per additional hard disk). The whole thing has some interesting implications for the music industry in general..."
Usually Canada follows what the States does in situations like this; it's nice to see us doing this. I didn't hear anything about it...
Maybe that's how it happened. Does RIAA have any influence in Canada? I wouldn't be surprised if some industry group showed up here and tried to mess things up.
- Steve
It's nice to see some law coming into place that makes sense. I hope the U.S. can see how much of a benefit passing "common sense" laws would help out our economy.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
LOADING...
READY.
RUN
Here's the real question, though--what do you do you do when a Windows using DJ gets a BSOD in the middle of a party?
~=Keelor
Affect me as an American. If the goog ol' US of A decides to prevent MP3 use they can and will with or without the premission of any world wide authority.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
mp3's for djing?
psshaw...
--freq
"Tension is the great integrity" -- R. Buckminster Fuller
Uck.
Why do they need some special law for this? If they own the CDs, they should be able to repackage the data anyway they want, as long as they're only using it the way they would use the original media.
In the United States, a DJ can already do this, and he won't have to pay any special licensing fees. It's only illegal if he distributes copies, or if he doesn't retain the originals.
Hate to be a nationalist but how does the policy..Affect me as an American.
It doesn't, but not everyone who reads slashdot is american.
-- iCEBaLM, Proud Canadian
i'm curious as to what kind of equipment (hardware and software) they're using.
there are pro sound cards i would trust to do the audio out, but i've never seen anything but 1/8" and POS d/ac's on laptops. the d/ac doesn't matter THAT much for live playback, but i don't trust those 1/8" cables in a mobile situation at all.
i've done it before with some success, but not at the level they're talking about. and every 1/8"->RCA cable i've ever used has flaked. i do suppose a pro 1/4" stereo to RCA or just a 1/4" stereo to dual 1/4" mono would work and be convertable... but something still strikes me wrong about it
oh yeah: yes, pro vs consumer cables REALLY matter for this stuff. not for audio quality, but for durability. even heavy duty 1/4" cables short sometimes when you move them around that much, and have dancing people around.
i'm also curious as to what software he's using. the only dj software i've seen for windows in virtual turntables.. which has been kinda iffy with me... a big problem is that you can't cue (listen to one song while playing another) unless you do a setup where the right channel out gets the cue and the left channel out gets the signal, which just isn't acceptable to me. anyone found anything better?
ps. i'm sticking with my 1200s ;)
...the RIAA get the .mp3 of "Blame Canada!" ? I'm sure they'll need it in a few hearings :)
Dan
This is very cool... the MP3 hate slackens in good ole Canada. My friends and I in the US are making something that can play MP3s on our school radio (not just plugging in a laptop... bringing in a CD/disk [not sure which just comin in in the middle of the project :P] for which we will build a player for...) so that'll be cool.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
jdube is who I am.
I'm working on a project right now to stream .mp3s while remaining in RIAA guidelines (quite a steaming pile of some nasty-ass legalese... I've been on the phone with them and my contractor's lawyer more than a few times trying to get it all straight).
What appears to be the RIAA's biggest worry (as evidenced by thier legal stuffies) is not that people have .mp3s, or even that they're broadcasting them over the net (or at a party or dance or whatever), but that their use is allowing people to bypass buying CDs. Take, for example, this snippit from the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (one of the documents one must adhere to for compliance), which states:
This is designed so that people can't simply set up a recording device of some sort and 'recreate' an album just by tuning in an pushing the button with the red dot. Other entries in there also seem geared towards non-copying things (some outright, others more hidden).
Under the circumstances, it seems pretty unlikely that DJs using mp3s in the field are going to be doing so for copying/trading purposes, so the RIAA probably wouldn't really give much of a care... and even if they did, the ability to police every kegger, rave and school dance is an impracticality of enormous proportions.
BTW - The site is at www.quicktracks.com. Please note that in its current incarnation we're *not* compliant. I'm working on that software right now, so the beastie will be up and down a bit over the next week or so as I poke at it.
--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)
"People will pay big bucks for the luxury of ignorance."
It's a step forward for recognition of MP3s as not-just-pirated-material, but it's not exactly a great thing altogether.
-Denor
As for sound quality, vinyl doesn't have as high a frequency range as CD, but MP3 worsens the problem by aliasing in some cases.
It seems the key difference between the American music industry and the Canadian music industry is the existance of Canada's Audio Video Licensing Agency (AVLA). It's run by the CRIA (similar to RIAA). The AVLA can license music for specific uses if the record companies will agree.
I assumed that major record companies would be opposed to DJs' use of MP3s, as I always held the RIAA's opposition to MP3s as a projection of major record companies' opposition. However, the article says:
Most of the major record companies have signed on to AVLA's licensing scheme, although Universal Music -- which owns Polygram -- continues to hold out.
What does this mean? Well, for starters, it means that every major record company that sells music in Canada thought it was worth mentioning that MP3s even existed. In addition, they thought that it was just fine for some people to commercially use licensed music in MP3 format.
What does this mean?
The RIAA is more evil than the record companies they allege to represent.
The RIAA web site says:
Consumers, retailers and replicators can report suspected music piracy to the RIAA by dialing a toll-free hotline, 1-800-BAD-BEAT or sending e-mail to badbeat@riaa.com.
So call them and tell them that you spotted a geeky-looking DJ with a laptop possessing licensed copies of Top 40 MP3s run across the US-Canadian border to avoid capture by authorities. He's probably armed and dangerous.
All you naysayers about Vinyl vs. MP3 should take a look at this...
http://www.n2it.net/finalscratch/
There.
It's important to remember that the Canadian government is still well on its way to imposing the asinine 50-cents-for-15-minutes tax on digital recording media.
The supposed rationale is that the tax will make up for the revenue lost by recording artists who have their works pirated. The monies collected are supposed to be distributed to those starving artists.
Unfortunately, the distribution will be based on the artists volume of media sold. The truly starving artists won't receive bugger all, while Celine Dion and Bryan Adams rake in yet more dough.
And never you mind that the tax is indiscriminate. You might never use your CDROM for music; you use it as data backup. You'll be paying the artists tax anyway, unless there's some sort of language that lets "For Data Use"-labelled CDROMs be sold taxless, while "For Music Use"-labelled ones be sold taxed.
It's a right cockup, in any case, and you can register your protest at http://www.sycorp.com/levyinfo.htm. Please do!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Is it meant to affect you in some way?
If you don't find the story interesting/relevent then just don't read it. You're not the only person who reads /. you know. Nor are we all American...
Any fool can create legalise and obscure things, and any fool will mind it. Information has been, and always will be... free. The RIAA would spend it's resources better trying to make water run uphill.
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...completely unregulated, and now the recording industry isn't blinded by hatred of MP3s. It's nice to know that those in power aren't completely clueless up here in Canada.
Imagine it. DJ MusicDealer caries around his magic machine with gigs of music, dodging the law. He goes to a party to deal out his music with a serial port board which interfaces with the Diamond Rio devices. They don't wanna pay $50 a cd (it's the future -- inflation). The cops break in, people scatter.
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ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
I dream of a radiostaion with no DJ's. Cut out the expense of the idiots and tone done the numbers of commercials and we might have something. A mp3 playlist station that requires 1/100 of the man hours to run. Then even I might tune in.
is why anyone needs "permission". If you own the actual CD's and can present them when provided with a legally binding request I don't see why one would NEED anyone's permission to use them.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm a dj in Canada and one of the great things about djing up here in the past has been that you can buy collections of licenced songs. You may have 600 albums that you've scraped pennies for but you probably don't have all of the songs that people would request (if you take em). I bought a collection of 200 cd's with my selection of songs on them. Covered everything and now when I n4eed neew music I only have to get singles updates. They're not for general distribution and are only available through dj supply companies, but sweet to have. THis mp3 licence is basically a revamping of the law that allows this in Canada.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
This can be viewed two ways: one, a major international organization is making a step in a productive manner that could, hopefully, get other countries to move in that direction, and two, they made a law to charge you for something that was already free. To my knowledge, it has always been free to rip music from CDs for your personal use, granted that you own the CD as well. There is a whole website devoted to mp3s that promotes a product, MusicMatch, that is available at www.download.com.
Signed, Yo Mammy!
The concept of limiting the license to one hard drive is quite limited, to say the least.
How does one define a hard drive?
Does a RAID count?
IBM now has 73.4GB hard drives (Ultrastar 72ZX). What is the point of limiting the storage to one physical hard drive?
Does the license apply to mp3's stored on other media?
How is the hard drive license enforceable and how are partitions dealt with?
Just a rant, ignore me.
----- --- - - -
jacob rothstein
jacob rothstein reed college
A neato software program for windows that is use is Foxplay. It is great for organizing music files .. from mp3s to midis to real audio to mods ... etc .. The author even considering a Linux port (with possibilities of releasing the source!) http://descent2.com/dorsola/ is the url. I don't know much about the equipment djs use, but this tool is certainly nifty and my proove to be so for djs :)
With MP3's this has always been the case. As long as you own the album, there is nothing illegal about it. I've been DJ'ing parties for years now using MP3's. It's just a matter of time before it is really mainstream. Whenever I DJ a party I just bring my laptop and sometimes a projector, fire up winamp and get a nice visual plugin going, and I let the thing go by itself.. MP3's are here to stay!
so far, it seems that the RIAA is so short sighted, that its making them totally paranoid of any use of music without having each person who's going to be hearing it pay them.
For example... the idea that it is bad for a radio station (or webcaster) to play an entire album over the air is absurd. First, it's unlikely that many people are going to have the forsight to record a whole show, let alone have their finger on the trigger, so to speak. If they were that excited to get the album, they'd eventually go buy it when they get fed up with the low quality indicative of home made recordings. the biggest thing tho, is that most people buy CDs after hearing them or at least a big piece of them on the radio. If you are only allowed to play a few songs on the air, the listener isnt going to get the 'big picture' of the album and isnt going to know whether or not they want to buy it. I mean, I dont make a habbit of buying CDs for 1 song. Not for 20 bucks... and I KNOW that it doesnt cost the RIAA even close to that to print and market the CDs (per disc)
So, really, the RIAA should not have such a big nose in such things. It'd be better for them, and everyone for radio djs to play whatever they want, in whatever order, whenever. Most DJs on smaller stations, where its more common to play a whole album arent likely to care about this little clause in the law. Nor do I think that anyone will really care if they break it.
as a dj... i would put together "bathroom dats" for when i really needed to go and didn't have an assistant to keep spinning while i was gone. just shove the puppy in the dat, and let it roll. when i asked a copyright lawyer type person about it, they said it was okey dokey as long as i retained the originals and had them present at the gig. seems to me, this would go for mp3s as well... hmm... methinks a laptop with an external scsi array might be in the works.-
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the amazing bc
latin/funk flugelhorn & trumpet
webnaut, music junkie, sysadmin from hell
the amazing bc
just another guy doing IT
webnaut, music junkie, holes-in-head
I now have a patent on using MP3's as the medium for DJ'ing. So now any time you want to DJ using MP3's, you hafta pay me.
It serves to demonstrate to you that counter productive political forces in the United States are holding back important technologies. Watch as the rest of the world embraces MP3 and strong crypto meanwhile American companies, restricted by powerful special interests, fall behind.
I just wanted to know how this could effect possible movements in the US. Policy makers take cues from different places around the globe not just what people dream up here.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
What's ironic here is that while Canada is actually taking the lead in this to legitimize mp3s, the only hold-out company from the Audio Video Licensing Agency, Universal Music, is actually a Canadian owned company (owned by Seagram of Montreal).....
If the DJs have already purchased the CDs, and therefore have paid the companies (and, supposedly, the artists) why should they have to pay additional fees just to convert the music into a different format?
--
Your fine use of the English language clearly shows you to be of alternate extraction. However, one US-centric comment need not raise your ire to a stage such as this. Comments like that only serve to perpetuate the sterotype that we as 'foreigners' are stupid, insensitive, nose-in-the-air cads. Besides, most /. posters are 'American', as is the site itself. Don't like the company? I'm sure Argentina has an equivalent, perhaps even in a more familiar tongue. Go there, and leave us to /.
.sig: Now legally binding!
Why can't the DJs just play the MP3s anyways, as long as they have bought the CD in the first place?
Is there a reason why a DJ here in the US can't buy a CD, MP3 it, and then take that somewhere to play it? He's already paid the record company (and thus the RIAA) and now he is just using his music.
Where's the problem? Why does he need a license?
(And yes I know this law exists in Canda, but the wired article implied US DJs can't use MP3s. I don't understand why.)
The thing that really gets me is that most of the Canadian labels are subsidiaries of American labels (ie. EMI Canada, Sony Canada). If you take into account that these companies are generally controlled by the same execs and policies (adjusted to Canadian law) then you see how the RIAA really shapes American policy without taking into account the wishes of the consumer, the artist, or the record company.
"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." -- Dalai Lama
Since when were Canadian DJs NOT allowed to use MP3s in their performances? As long as the DJ legally purchased the original record or CD that the mp3 came from I see nothing wrong with spinning mp3s. What an absurd law.
The article in Wired gives the impression that it was previously illegal to use anything other than the original media when DJ'ing for money...as if! Even the most backwards RIAA toad would agree that it's OK for DJs to create compilations for use in performances, as long as they own the originals and never distribute the compilation.
The CN$200 fee gives DJs a blanket license to make one reproduction of music released by most of the major record companies.
And we're supposed to act like this is a good thing? DJs have used homemade cassette tape recordings in their performances for years without anyone making a fuss. Granted, most serious DJs use vinyl or CD these days, but there's nothing stopping them from using minidiscs or DATs if they wanted. It looks to me like Canada has lifted a restriction where no restriction ever existed, along with adding a convenient new source or revenuse (from the $200 license). However, IANAC (I am not a Canadian). Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong ;).
Using re-recorded media is nothing new. DJs have also been able to use samples of copyrighted media (within certain limits) for ever.
Better go turn myself in to the RCMP: one time I drove through part of Canada while listening to burned audio CDs made from mp3s. It's a good thing nobody else heard the music or offered to pay me for it, or I'd be in big trouble, eh!?
what if said dj does NOT use mp3, but rather vinyl. The dj's set is broadcast live over the 'net, as well as archived in digital audio (.mp3, .ra, etc..) later on. Will this be going against the RIAA? The audio itself is off of traditional media, but the end result is still in a digital format on a PC. Maybe I am not seeing the difference.
This isn't a law. It's a lisencing agreement from the Cadadian Recording Industry Association
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<SIG>
"I am not trying to prove that I am right... I am only trying to find out whether." -Bertolt Brecht
<sig>Guvf vf abg n frperg zrffntr
People copy copyrighted material from CD's to hard disks all the time. It's called ``software installation''. Also, back in the days when software was shipped on floppies, it was acceptable practice to make backup floppies.
Copies that are made for personal convenience or backup purposes don't amount to copyright infringement.
The DJ already has legal master copies and is allowed to play them to the clients, so what does it matter by what means the music makes its way to the speakers?
What's surprising to me is that this wasn't previously allowed.
Actually, DJ's are not allowed to play any music they own copies of. They must obtain a license to play their tunes. (Just like radio stations .)
Ever read the FBI warning at the beginning of those tapes you rent from Blockbuster? Notice the bit about "illegal to rent or broadcast..."?
Fair use prohibits broadcasting/renting. Just because you have a CD collection, you are allowed to broadcast the music. You must obtain consent from the artist (or whoever holds the rights to the work.)
Making copies of a work for personal use is allowed under fair use provisions of copyright law; however, being paid to play these works at someone else's party can hardly be considered "personal use."
Seriously, Washington is becoming more oppressive, tax hungry, and legislation happy every day. What is required to become a citizen (or at least a legal resident) of Canada?
Is it illegal for a dj to record onto minidisc and use that for a performance? How about to a DAT? Now how about a .wav or .au? I'm curious where the line got drawn.
As a local underground DJ here in Vancouver, it's going to be intresting to see where this goes. Over in Toronto the CRIA assisted the RCMP in the seziure of DJ mixtapes from the shelves of undergroud record stores, and the proesuction of some of the shop owners. This caused the pulling of mixtapes from at least 2 well-known underground music stores here in Vancouver. Personally IMO the CRIA has no place doing this as a lot of the record labels that are on those tapes have no association with the CRIA (a lot of the record labels that make the music come from the UK.) At the worst I see the CRIA taking a crusade against underground media (DJ Mixtapes, bootleg remixes) like the RIAA has taken against the MP3 scene. I definitely don't think we've seen the last of the CRIA tho, since the last 2 times the CRIA has been in the headlines that I've heard, the word "DJ" has been in the sentence.
And anyways, personally again the CRIA should put thier hands in another cookie jar, this one may be tasty, but it's definitely not profitiable (at least on the level I'm on now.)
According to geo: im still kinda in the who wants to use mp3s to dj stage I don't really do the dj thing. but if you don't need to haul around dj records perhaps that would be good
making the whole dj scene more portable may be good for them
[geo]:YEAH BITCH
[geo]: #RIT OWNED UR ASS
positive: you may remember me from such cartoons as 'christmas ape' and 'christmas ape goes to summer camp'
Charging $200 to play mp3s is nothing. Remember the $0.74 per 15 minutes of recording time on CD-Rs? The rationale behind that gem was that people could download mp3s and then burn the music to CD, despite the fact that burning music in such away accounted for, like, 3% of what CD-Rs are used for in Canada. It's just example of the Canadian Man putting us Canadians down!
The States seems to rarely pay attention to what's going on in the rest of the world when it comes to legislation. One need only look at the War on Drugs to realize that. Funny how the EXISTENCE of an agency in Canada was behind the liberalization of DJ mp3 use though.. guess sometimes there is a use for guv'mint after all. To hold other guv'mint bits in check. "D
I hate to tell you but I have been out of the loop for both sound and enryption. Firstly I have never owned a computer that ever had sound support. Secondly I have never had the opportunity to really have access to a system that needed to have access to data that should have been encrypted. I have never been able to impliment enrypted e-mail in any shape or form due to the lack of a computer that I could secure with a real IP. Lastly I would love the chance to actually travel the world but there are several things stopping me: Language barriers, lack of a large ammount of petty cash, ability to obtain anything but suboptimal employment in said country as a foreigner. Barring these problems I would love to look at the rest of all else that is there but I am pretty much have not seen all of my country first. I know most other people can pretty much predict what their countries will hold for them due to size but I haven't left the part of mine that I am inhabiting now. Cultural diversity in the US is quite astounding and I would like to see more of it.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
I am going to make this short but sweet: The idea that people want the worst types of obscene New Age airheads there are to engender ill will is a fundamental misunderstanding of the human condition. You see, I decisively believe that I cannot believe that the legal system would consider dastardly shiftless hatemongers as oppressive bloodthirsty kleptomaniacs. And because of that belief, I'm going to throw politeness and inoffensiveness to the winds, to reinforce the point that the unalterable law of biology has a corollary that is generally overlooked. Specifically, the lawyers allege, after performing shoddy research and utilizing threadbare scholarship, that a number of their enemies are planning to purge the land of every non-pretentious person, gene, idea, and influence. If I am doomed to faint, then the legal system will obviously paint pictures of abysmal worlds inhabited by the worst sorts of disagreeable scatterbrains there are in the near future. The legal system talks loudly about family values and personal responsibility, but when it comes to backing up those words with actions, all it does is fund a vast web of voluble negligent conspiracy theorists, vindictive con artists, and insolent garrulous idiots. The courts would state that obscurity, evasiveness, incomprehensibility, indirectness, and ambiguity are marks of depth and brilliance. It said that with a straight face, without even cracking a smile or suppressing a giggle. It said it as if it meant it. That's scary, because we have to start talking with one another honestly, in honest language. The facts are in: You probably know exactly what I mean
That remark is on the second page, at http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,32554-2
"There are no collective industry organizations in the United States such as AVLA, which is empowered to collect license fees and disburse them among record companies. Consequently, American DJs have no legal mechanical reproduction rights at all, never mind the right to make MP3s."
WTF is this? You should have the right unless some specific law says you don't. I'd like to know that specific law. My point is if the DJ drops in and plays and mixes mp3's and one of them is pirated, then if someone thinks it's pirated then do an audit. Mic-record what he is playing and then see if he has the actual music purchased on CD or vinyl. It's far simpler than all this 'licensing' crap.
But that's the point..they want to make this into an extortion racket. You buy the music once and then pay again to play it. Bah. I'll just hold my own private parties.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
And spin 'em at 78RPM with steel needles that cut right through 'em in no time. Not like those backward cylinder heads with their Edison players, by crackey!
Are you sure you want to have a $1.25 per blank CDR tax to prevent piracy? This money goes back to recording artists, but only if the recording artists already sell a lot of CD's. New artists, trying to get off the ground by distributing CDR's of their music, are left in the cold. Celine Dion gets richer, poor artists get poorer. The government is just as oppressive and money-hungry here as it is there... (Except for Alberta.) It's just a different form of oppression.
From the article: But "with MPEG-3 compression you can get a lot of music on a hard drive," said Heindl
Perhaps I'm mistaken, but isn't it MPEG-1 layer 3?
It's as simple as that. I've found it to be the best, most reliable, and open digital music option. Case in point, Real. I no longer use any Real products. I've also made it Company Policy (yup) that we not their products (that's also a bandwidth issue). Each site I visit that uses the format I send a concise, polite letter saying why I won't use Real and why I want MP3.
I also use Sonique and download MP3s streamed straight to 32mb files, which I then dump to a Rio. Simple, easy, open. Nobody messin' with my HD, nobody tracking me. And now I listen to a LOT more music (and NO fscking commercials), in wide ranging genres.
What the RIAA (and others) needs to realize is that the Internet makes control of digital media impossible. Their products have become (like software) inherently infinite. Pricing based on scarcity will become more and more difficult to maintain. The entire business model needs to change to take this into account. This is not being done. Enough ranting, sorry this is a bit off-topic, but if you have the bandwidth and sit in front of or near a computer for much fo the time, there are vast fields of interesting tones awaiting your inspection, don't let them be taken away from you. (/offtopic rant)
+&x
The law in question is copyright law. In the absence of a licensing organization (such as the old-line licensing orgs that collect fees for sheet music, public performance, and radio), you would have to clear each reproduction or public performance with the actual copyright holder. So, the article is a bit inaccurate in expressing this in terms of "rights".
In practice, when there is no collective org around to provide clearance and collect/disburse the fees, you get a free-for-all. When there is a copyright collective in place (for music, but there are also ones for writing, collecting license fees from photocopiers around the world), they charge fees to concert venues, broadcasters, basically anyone who it is efficient to collect license fees from, and come up with a disbursement scheme that their members will tolerate, such as doing "sweeps" of radio station playlists and averaging what kind of share each copyright holder gets from that.
Some small-time composers and songwriters do fairly well by this, although whoever does the highest volume gets the biggest share.
Somebody farther back said that Celine Dion was going to get all of the money. Unless she owns the copyright to actual musical compositions, she won't get a cent. While a musical composition can be copyrighted, a performance cannot. This may change (possibly has in some countries already, I'm not sure), I know there is a lobby of musicians in Canada arguing that "neighbouring rights", i.e. the right to copyright and collect royalities for a performance, should be enshrined in law. The implications of this are actually potentially huge, for instance if you made use of another performer's phrasing, would you be reproducing their performance?
if the DJ drops in and plays and mixes mp3's and one of them is pirated, then if someone thinks it's pirated then do an audit. Mic-record what he is playing and then see if he has the actual music purchased on CD or vinyl. It's far simpler than all this 'licensing' crap.
I would tend to disagree that policing is simpler than licensing. IMO, enforcing on each piece of music would have to involve way more people and way more time than having a copyright collective collect and enforce per venue, per dj or per storage device.
Maybe the commercial software industry should form copyright collectives instead of charging per box sold. Let people grab functional copies of products off the net, collect license fees for every CPU sold, and from time to time take a representative survey to see who gets what share of the license fees that have been collected. (That's a I SAID THAT'S A JOKE SON)
You've got it back to front I think. Despite throwing the occasional olive branch as in this case, the RIAA has a massive problem with MP3s, because they're fighting for their very survival, even more so than the musicians. There are a lot of possible scenarios for the future of the music industry in which the RIAA ceases to exist utterly, along with the studios that they represent.
Their current actions are like the red flags that pressure groups walked in front of locomotives, and their mega-industry is every bit as collosal as the one that used to be centred on the horse for transport and which now does not exist at all except in tiny niches. The lesson of history is that even the most extensive and solid of institutions is not as permanent as it may seem in its heyday.
In the case of music, that impermanence couldn't be more clear. Before the invention of recording, it wasn't possible to make money from replication of musical performances. Then recording was invented but replication required massive plants and capital, which created the opportunity for an industry to be born and collosal profits to be made. And now the wheel of technological progress has turned again: replication can be performed by anyone and costs almost nothing, and the window of opportunity for making profits from it has closed again.
Despite their self-righteous rationalizations, there is no law of nature that says that the music industry will always be as lucrative as it has been for the last few decades. There are no fixed points where technology is concerned, and MP3s are a sign of that. This newest chapter in the empowerment of individuals effectively means that the time for massive profits from replication and controlled distribution is over, that the RIAA is in the throes of extinction or at least severe mutation, and that the relationship between musicians and their audience is in transition. And so be it.
Bye bye RIAA. No one really expects you to die quietly, but die you will, just like other prehistoric giants who were too set in their ways to adapt to changing conditions. And that's not a bad analogy, because once again it's those pesky little creatures underfoot that are in the ascendency.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
Isn't it the US following Canada most of the time? Its just that they make more noise when they do it.
No offense meant. But do you seriously talk like that? Or was this a vocabulary excercise? Or are you victorian?
Speaking of 1948 and WWII in general. The United States was a latecomer, so your absolutely correct in that circumstance!
If you read what you quoted you'd see that it's not really a LAW but rather a LICENSE
Obviously. The less than perfect situation (within stumbling reach of drunks with requests) is the rule, not the exception.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The damn things still get scratched much easier though, and would be a bitch to play in a moving vehicle ;-P
--
You're still using Windows?
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
somebody please moderate this one up!
I thought the same thing when I saw ass'n, but I just can't wax poetic like the above AC did
These pretzels are making me thirsty.
my question is the following, why doesn't
someone hack up some sound drivers for
linux/windows which allow recording to a
file (ala esound's monitor capability).
this would not only be incredibly usefull
but it would pre-empt any sense in encrypting
streaming audio until they start burning
decryption keys into the sound cards
themselves.
I'm not trying to start a flame war here, but come on... no freedom of press? That's a little hard to justify, don't you think?
Reboot.EXE - 00 00
I'm surprised you feel so insecure that you have to belittle a guy who "makes 50 dollars a month" If Americans weren't so arrogant - they might have contributed something useful to the world by now. Oh wait, they have - Microsoft, Atomic weapons, and piss pretending to be beer.
I don't recall where this was, but in some US court, it had already been decided that converting a CD track to an MP3 was simple 'space shifting' music you already own and perfectly legal.
Remember that this is the Canadian RIA, an organization which successfully lobbied for a $2 tax PAYABLE TO THEM for every CDR sold in the Great White North. Trying to screw DJ's over music they already own doesn't surprise me...
OK, so how about a DJ who sets up a 200 CD changer at home, and encrypts and transmits all of his tracks on the fly to his site in the field? Does he have to pay for that? What if he pre-buffers the encoded track on his hard disk before transmission? Does he pay for that?
It's total BS. I have as much faith left in the laws that govern the recording industry as I do in the guys who grant software patents... which is to say, none whatsoever.
Apparently the notion of 'space shifting' hasn't made it into Canada yet. Either that, or the CRIA is even more evil than the RIAA.
when we throw parties (at our fraternity) we use mp3's -- and the 8 times a night windows pukes, the mixer is hastily switched to CD. Of course, there is the song just dying in the middle and a new one starting up. if only the djs could learn to use linux...
I'm a (radio) DJ on a collage station here in Ottawa.. IMO, AVLA is one of those self-feeding groups that has very little impact on your average working DJ.. Off the top of my head, I can't think of anyone I know who is a memeber, but I've never asked.. It's like the relationship between the RIAA to your average garage band.. And there are even less rich DJs then rich rock stars.
This decision is just a way to score some ink and political fire for a otherwise tiny and powerless group.. Of course it's already legal to make comps out of CDs you already own, they know that..
They seem to be addressing hardcore 'single' type DJing, where downloading the super fresh singles of the moment off the net and licencing them would be useful.. Maybe in the clubs in london or dancehalls in jamacia, but in canada that scene just isn't much of a factor. Besides, that style of DJing pretty much requires vinyl..
Of course, you can just skip the fee and do it anyway.. The record companies want the exposure anyway, club plays lead to album sales.. That's why they make white labels (pre-releases for DJs).. Our station gets a boat load of free promo-only music every week.. They'd happly pay us $200 to download and play their song, but that's illigal.. Instead they have to give away free trips and prizes and crap.. "Win a trip to blah to see blah contest." Guess who pays for those I'm sure Chris Sheppards life is a non-stop orgy of record company financed sin.
Labels don't care about DJs stealing their hot new singles.. On the other hand, DJs building up a few hundred gigs of mp3s by ripping every CD they can get their hands on and then using that for gigs, that might be a little worrying.. But still, there just aren't enough DJs in Canada for it to matter in term of sales.. DJs have been doing record pools forever..
So basically, this is totally meaningless to everyone I can think of, but I will admit, a tiny step forward and that's still good..
Here is an item describing a tariff structure that the Canadian copyright board has come up with for the distribution of some music over the internet. It applies only to servers physically located in Canada and has some interesting things to say about the role of ISP's.
Laugh while you can, monkey boy!
Way to go Canada! I only hope that it stays that way. Here in The Netherlands we once had that we could up to put 5 different MP3s at a time on a website legally for $50/month, it unfortuneately didn't last that long..
...albeit not mobile. The AudioVault system, used to keep radio stations playing through the wee hours of the night when no sane person would be up, stores music in MP2 format that it plays through a hardware codec. Its never been illegal to compress music. Its just been illegal to copy it in certain cases. Still, I applaud this decision. It really "makes sense", dont you think? Music licensing has always been a big peeve of mine. When you buy software (which you also don't "own") you are at least given the six pages of licence. When you buy a CD, you have NO idea what your rights are. This isn't right.