The DMCA happened because the content industries were onn Capitol Hill pushing their agenda while the electronics manufacturers were nowhere to be seen. That's changing, as many manufacturers are now waking up and fighing things like mandated DRM.
Excellent.
In short, the best way to beat one monied interest is with another monied interest (the insurance lobbies and the drug makers' lobbies are constantly at each others' throats.
I agree, but one can't always depend on having a group with money who happens to agree with one's political agenda, and even if there is one who would benefit, one can't guarantee that they'll take a wide enough view of their interests to do anything about it. I remember writing the American Electronics Association about content industry-friendly legislation years ago... and got ignored.
Also remember that there is another way to buy effective political representation. Would you use the word "ineffective" to describe either the NRA or the AARP? A mass organization that can aggregate millions of small contributions into a few big ones via PAC can also work well.
Not that it's likely that the "geek" community will build one. This would require somebody with a megabuck or more to throw in to hire people like you or Morgan Reed to front it and experienced political activists to get the infrastructure together. The people who can afford to do this are exactly the people with the "smug self-satisfaction" you rightfully sneer at.
He's right on the money on one thing though, more donations to the EFF are going to be required if we want our voice to compete with the likes of MS, RIAA etc.
You are simply wrong. He knows better, but would prefer our efforts be misdirected.
No non-profit organization representing individuals can lobby with effectiveness comparable to that of a political lobbyist who can write checks or in the case of an organization which is technically non-profit such as Morgan Reed's (or more accurately, Microsloth's) Association for Competitive Technology, can tell his clients who can write checks who "deserves" to receive political campaign contributions...
Believe me, the staff members for any Congressman or Senator know which lobbyists can bring them money and which can only bring hot air.
While the EFF is valuable, if we want real political change in our favor, a small group of us will have to come up with the megabuck or more required to build the infrastructure for a NRA/AARP style PAC (Political Action Committee) that can raise money for candidates and actively campaign for or against candidates, and all the rest of us are going to have to come up with the money to make the actual campaign contributions.
All the EFF can do with real effectiveness is put out fires through the legal system.
No matter how good the arguments made for legislation made by an EFF staff member, they're going to be trumped by someone like Reed who can talk about the companies like Microsoft he represents. Things like the DMCA didn't pass because the EFF was asleep at the switch, they passed because lobbyists with money behind them had a much more effective argument. . . campaign money.
Parents with money, generally with political influence of their own they think might be enhanced by having their kid become a political "fixer". (as in "the fix is in")
I got a few substantive facts, something of a better feeling for your environment than you previously had, and got some great how-to ideas in the area of spin control and ignoring inconvenient questions and how to carefully meter out just enough truth to enhance your intended points.
Here's a good example:
The government isn't evil or invisible, it responds to the interests of its people.
Yes, and "its people" are those who participate meaningfully in the political process by donating thousands of dollars to the candidates of their choice.
Generally, one sees these techniques used by politicians and lawyers orally in courtrooms, putting them in the form of text makes them a lot easier to study. I think you deserve thanks for this.
I was delighted and a bit surprised to see how many other people cut straight through the spin you were putting on known facts... and the posts that demonstrate this best are the ones you didn't respond to. Apparently, we both underestimated the level of political awareness of some of the Slashdot readers. I suspect that you expected only softball questions.
The funniest thing said about you was "Obviously, this guy is a little idealistic." But seriously, if you were an idealist really trying to make the world as opposed to your checking account a better place, we all know you'd be doing something else for a living. Making a better world for MS is not the same thing as making a better world, or even a better place for anyone to do high-tech. I'm not linking that post, I'm sure the author has figured out just how far he put his foot in it.
What are ACT's positions on:
H1B and anti-outsourcing legislation?
Effective antitrust enforcement?
Adequate funding for the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) and effective enforcement of its regulations?
Patent reform and software patents in general?
Federal opt-out "anti-spam" legislation which the informed consensus says will make the current spam situation far worse than it is?
Do you think any real ACT position on the above has any substantial support here?
Based on your posts and interview responses, I do not believe that you want effective "geek activism". There are areas where the goals of one of your clients, MS and the goals of the rest of the technology community are diametrically opposed and a politically effective high-tech and/or Open Source might make your life a whole lot more difficult.
Also, move I above F, and kill off all the postcards. Finally, move faxes and email way up. One of the only good things to come out of 9/11 is that Members of Congress have been forced to use email as a preferred method of communication. Paper mail and knickknacks have become harder to get into the Capitol.
Perhaps they respond to your e-mail, which shows up at addresses not exactly in the public domain. If I were a major contributor to my Congresswoman, I'm sure she'd find some way to make it possible to communicate with her that doesn't bottleneck through a webform.
Instead we're going to make a bunch of lawyers rich, a bunch of parents whos 12 year old kids are downloading and hosting millions of songs turn off the internet because it corrupted poor johnn and jane, and we're going to get it so that anything outside of port 80 requests to certified websites will be reported as piracy activity and they'll use the PATRIOT act to hunt us down.
By repeating the RIAA party line on "stealing", you are helping make that future possible. My guess is that this is your real intent.
Putting a broadcast-quality music track onto a P2P network or Internet radio is giving it free publicity. Would an RIAA weenie or artist whine if a commercial radio station decided to put their track in heavy rotation without an "ADD" fee of $1000 per play?
The difference between this and the radio:
The law is different. This is because the RIAA paid a shitload of money to politicians to make it that way. Tape swapping=legal , file swapping=copyright infringement... but this is a legal difference, for those who don't allow their personal morality to be made by corrupt politicians.
Using the net to publicize this pushes the transmission costs onto the end user. This should make the RIAA happy. See below for why it doesn't.
The RIAA bought the law this way because their goal is to make end users afraid of downloading music through any sources but RIAA mamber sites, to which indie musicians won't have access. They know Internet promo works, but they'd rather nobody had access to it than let everybody play on a nominally level playing field.
Tell Eminem and Radiohead your RIAA-inspired bullshit about how nobody ever uses P2P to preview CDs... both have benefited from P2P directly in the sense of increased CD sales. Marrilon's basic business model is based on Internet marketing. Lots of othsrs, those immediately come to mind.
BTW, I metamodded your post down. It doesn't rate insightful. There is no insight in it. Unfortunately,/. doesn't have a "Propaganda" category yet.
Your legal cites were accurate, but aren't necessarily relevant to home recording, which is governed by the Audio Home Recording Act of 1992. Google is your friend. Suffice it to say that analog taping for personal use (including giving copies to friends) is "fair use" and doing the same thing via digital files and the Net is copyright infringement.
It doesn't take an economist or a lawyer to understand point 4 - sharing copyrighted content that you do not have rights to millions of people would have DEFINITELY have a substantial impact upon the value of the copyrighted work.
The evidence available from non-RIAA studies and from empirical evidence shows that the value of copyrighted work increases when redistributed to millions of people.
The record industry obviously knows this at an internal level, that's why any track played on a commercial radio can be regarded as a paid advertisement for the actual CD product.
128K MP3s distributed via payola-compensated FM or P2P or via Internet Radio is not the product. A product for which there is no market can not be considered a "commercial product" in any sense but a narrowly legal one whose definition comes from laws made by politicians 0wn3d by the *AA.
It's merely a promotional item which the public uses to make buy/don't buy decisions about the actual product, either a CD or better than broadcast quality downloadable tracks from iTunes.
That's why independent musicians often release their own work via P2P channels. Only in the dreamworld occupied only by *AA publicists, you (is that redundant?), and politicians 0wn3D by the *Aa do people buy CDs without listening to at least some of the content first.
In the real world, it doesn't matter whether a person makes a buying decision via P2P download, Internet Radio, or FM radio with respect to a decision to buy making money for the artist.
Why don't you wander off and go tell Eminem that the person who uploaded his entire current album to P2P destroyed the value of all of his work.
Of course, in the real world, not the one you live in, his album went immediately to #1 and he's crying about P2P all the way to the bank. And there might be some personal risk for you in telling him this to his face, he is not reputed to suffer fools gladly.
One other thing about your anti-piracy whining. If the *AA really cared about piracy, they'd be using the politicians they own to do whatever it takes to get the Asian countries in which bootleg copies of CDs are pressed to stop instead of the cosmetic efforts in process now.
The *AA problem isn't piracy, they merely want to strike so much fear into the public that they will only download MP3s from "approved" music industry sites... which would effectively cut off independent artists from using the Net as a promotional channel. That's the real bottom line. I work to publicize an independent artist and finding people willing to host her MP3s for P2P is very difficult because of the RIAA attack on P2P users. Of course, that means that the RIAA attack is succeeding, at least in the US... the personal solution... host them in a free country where the *AA didn't subvert the political process.
Do you guys really think that nobody has managed to figure out the obvious?
It is against the law to distribute copyrighted material without the copyright holder's consent.
Wrong.
You've never heard of mandatory broadcasting licensing? (which includes royalties paid via Performing Rights Societies paid to the composer) Did radio stations suddenly shift to playing 30 second song samples without telling anyone?
You've never heard that tape swapping via analog tape is fair use not requiring permission of the copyright owner?
You really should try sources of information other than *AA propaganda before you try to sound like an informed adult discussing a public policy issue, you've already revealed your ignorance to the public.
By that rationale, you're allowed to rape, torture and murder people without a care in the world as long as you do it at home. After all, it is your house.
You compare copyright infringement governed by copyright laws made through the legal bribery of Federal elected officials in collusion with the *AA organizations to rape, torture, and murder?
What planet are you from? And why don't you go back where you came from?
Of course, a more relevant question is how much is an anonymous PR firm working for one of the *AA organizations or one of the major labels paying you to unload this swill on slashdot?
The other possibility is that you've been exposed to so much *AA propaganda that you believe it to be fact... which speaks to your intelligence.
Copyrights exist to provide an incentive to push works into the public domain, by providing a means for the publisher to make money off the published work. Sharing files with friends deprives him of that income. I don't see how sharing files with friends is 'clearly not immoral' (though one could argue that it isn't).
Eminem's latest album was "prereleased" to P2P a month in advance. Tell him about the income he was deprived of. It is generally believed that the P2P acted as free promotion for the album, which went immediately to #1 in sales.
Ask Radiohead about how using P2P has deprived them of sales.
There are plenty of bands around which case studies of Internet marketing can be done.
If making music publically available without restriction was bad for music publishers, why do record companies pay radio stations to play their music in the modern version of payola?
A 128K MP3 is simply a promotional item. It can influence a buying decision whether played back on the radio, downloaded, or played back as streaming audio via Internet Radio. You say "it's a product"? I don't see anyone buying them and neither do you. Putting one up on a P2P network is simply the equivalent of putting a track on radio stations and getting it to a few potential customers free of charge.
This isn't about protecting artists. Nobody who knows about how record label contracts work would believe this, though perhaps you do.
This is simply about conditioning the public to fear downloading even explicitly legal files from any locations other than a record industry approved pay-per-download source.
They simply want to cut off independent artists from access to the public in large masses, they want to be able to say to an indie "you can make a living in music with us or not at all".
An artist can make a pretty decent living selling 10K records at a per-unit profit of $5 each to supplement touring. It's a lot harder at 25 cents a record AFTER the record label's version of its costs have been repaid. The industry wants to take the choice away from musicians technology gave options to.
Please try to describe in instance where distributing copyrighted material without the copyright holder's permission is 'right'.
Easy.
FM broadcast usage... it's called mandatory broadcast licensing.
Analog tape recording and swapping, legally defined as "fair usage".
Why is the digital equivalent (128K MP3 via P2P) of taping and tape trading illegal?
Campaign contributions aka legal bribery to elected Federal officians. If you want to construct some great moral principle out of this, be my guest. But don't expect to be treated with respect for expressing your viewpoint.
Even if you are being paid to spread RIAA propaganda here via some anonymous PR firm, you really can't expect respect for that even from the people who sign your paycheck.
If you're saying this because you actually believe *AA propaganda about "protecting starving artists", you're too dumb to deserve respect.
A lawyer who can't make his child-molesting serial killer client a sympathetic figure to a jury isn't worth a whole lot.
In this case, their client is the US government and indirectly, the Hollywood cartel.
The image they projected is exactly what they wanted you to see.
Anyone here really think that top priority among cases doesn't automatically go the billion dollar companies and the "little guy" poster child they cited wasn't chosen specifically for future public relations value?
Just because someone represents bad guys for a living doesn't mean he's going to come across as a cross between Satan and Barney the Dinosaur possessed by Charlie Manson. A trial lawyer that sends the jury screaming out of the jury box just isn't worth a whole lot to anyone he represents.
I'd give their interview a "9" for spin control and a "5" for content... it was worth reading both for the information and the pointers on technique and if any are around, I'd like to thank them for showing up.
On the other hand, criminals, terrorists, and anyone else who wants to corrupt the voting process can easily break the password and discover how to mess up the voting.
Now that's the DMCA in action, protecting your freedom! Oh yes, the DMCA is going to be just excellent for technology research and innovation.
The DMCA was written by people with the same love of democracy and of the advancement of human knowledge as Osama bin Laden has. And most of the people who voted for it can accurately be described the same way.
"People always get the local government they deserve."
E.E. "Doc" Smith
However, I have no sympathy for those who think actual copyright violations should be ignored and copyright law should disappear.
I have no sympathy for people who parrot RIAA propaganda as if it were true and believe that you should disappear.
The only legal difference between "fair use" analog taping and swapping of broadcast-quality music and digital recording and fileswapping is that the RIAA paid off certain politicians to make updating of common use illegal.
The purpose is to make it impossible to distribute non-RIAA content through the Internet because people fear that your thug RIAA buddies will show up with subpoenas if they log onto a P2P network.
The musicians who upload songs to P2P hoping to get the word out about their music don't want copyright to go away, just the RIAA thugs and "useful fools" like you who make excuses for their anti-social activities.
You just mentioned iTunes in the same sentence where you claim the recording industry is not creating a feasible ditribution method for music online. iTumes is one of their feasible distribution methods. The stupidity of some people just amazes me.
i-T-u-n-e-s (note your mini-spellng lesson) was created by APPLE CORPORATION. You know, those guys who make MacIntosh personal computers. The guys who are also giving independent artists access to iTunes through CDBaby, which is hardly anything that the RIAA would either do or want anyone else to.
Yes, the stupidity of some people amazes me, and you are a prime example.
Thought of changing your handle to pencilneck? (there's a song Pencilneck Geek by Fred Blassie that reminds me of you.)
Count Baise, John Coltraine, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, Gershwin, Louis Armstrong, Nora Jones, Kurt Elling, Max Roach, Charlie Mingus,
Gershwin aside, how many of these guys died broke because of record label contracts deliberately constructed to screw the artist?
How many of those records are sitting in vaults with no plans by the labels ever to make them available to the public, but if you upload your copy so kids can hear great music of the past, you're going to get sued?
If you want to honor the memory of great seminal artists of the past, help break the record industry who generally rat-fucked them by buying music ONLY from non-RIAA independent artists.
If you just want to listen to their music which is by and large, out of print, buy music ONLY from non-RIAA independent artists
If you just stop buying music, the record labels CEOs can go to Congress and their bosses and say PIRATES are stealing, not buying. What kind of bad new laws can get rammed through Congress? Want to find out?
If you buy from independent musicians instead, major label profits, indie profits skyrocket, and you'll be sending the right message... the message to Congress: People will buy, but not from thugs. The message to the CEOs the record label presidents report to? They've hired retarded fuckheads who are taking the value of their companies down by the day.
Break the industry and the new buyers are going to be people with a clue about technology who know as well as you and I do that music sitting idle in a vault makes profit for nobody.
You want to hear that rare/out of print Count Basie disk? Odds on, a few months after these labels go under new management and ownership, you'll probably be able to buy it using CD-on-demand technology or download it at.99 cents at track.
There is now no reason for a record ever to go out of print.
When we say the labels are using obsolete business models, those of us with a clue are totally serious.
Why don't labels have everything they've got down to Edison Wax Cylnders digitized and ready to burn? One time cost, indefinite profit stream, and if an Great Old One ever comes back in style, don't burn one-off, crank up a CD pressing plant and make a million or 6.
Alternately, if they dont want to do this, why not take big tax writeoffs and donate them to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian?
They're sitting on them instead because that's what their predecessors did, and they don't have a clue of their own.
It's tarpit time for these dinosaurs, and it's time to give them a shove in that direction.
The MPAA, or rather the big member companies who are frequently also the major record labels is just as much behind the laws these people are being victimized by as the RIAA. They are hoping that people are frightened off of downloading content from any but an "official online shop", even if it's explicit that the "non-official" people own the content they are making freely available.
Why? Same reason as the RIAA, control of distribution channels. The MPAA isn't just Jack Valenti, there are guys who know that if the next Steven Spielberg decides "fuck Hollywood, I'm putting a PC render farm in my closet" around next-gen technology and goes straight to selling DVDs and broadband distribution direct to people's TVs... they might be looking at the same kind of trouble the record labels are.
Apparently, they think that megapromotion budgets, control of theaters, megaproduction budgets, and even a fair product at a fair price (yes, I think DVD movies are fair value for money) isn't enough, they want to be in a position to say you make movies for us or not at all.
Even Hilary Rosen concedes that this model is dead in the record industry.
The RIAA is not only taking the heat for their member companies, they're taking it for the MPAA, too. Is there some relationship between the two other than sending contributions and lobbyists to the same people that isn't obvious?
RIAA has realized that most individuals over the age of 50 are ignorant of the filesharing ideology; we can relate that to a nice bunch of peasants.
You mean the generation whose recording off the radio on analog tapes and sharing the music with friends turned the Grateful Dead and later Metallica into multiplatinum artists? For us, that was "fair usage".
That's why kids don't grow up thinking that sharing music is piracy or theft.
The only explanation they need is "remember when you used to record off the radio and trade tapes with friends? Do you know that if you do this using your computer to record and the Internet, the RIAA will sue your asses?"
And if they ask "Why, what's the difference?", just tell them the truth, that they bribed a bunch of politicians to make new laws.
A successful boycott means the value of that company will be depressed by owning a major record label.
Just a few percent drop in gross revenues for the labels matched by a massive increase in indie sales means a massive drop in investor confidence in the companies that own them and questions fron stock analysts like "when are you going to dump that turkey?" They're going to unload as fast as they can for the best price they can in order to avoid going down the toilet with their entertainment properties.
I think Sony's going to have something very big for sale real soon now... and they'll be selling what's in the master vaults and artist contracts only. What investor group is going to want a bunch of suits who reduced the value of their company by a factor of several?
I now know why Apple didn't buy Universal. They figured that if they wait a few months, they could buy the IP and contracts for a few hundred megabucks instead of $4,000,000.
A month ago, I figured the RIAA labels had a few years to go. Now, I'll be surprised if any of the labels are under current management by summer 2004.
While Boycott RIAA is k3wl, use the RIAA Radar search tool that finds both labels and artists on RIAA labels.
Though it's a fair bet that anything you hear on commercial radio or can find on the shelf at a record store is RIAA. . . but how hard is it for any of us to find indie band websites?
They need to avoid getting the wrong poster child for "big, vicious corporation" vs "little people" . Otherwise a national boycott of RIAA won't need to be organized, it'll happen spontaneously.
They also have to avoid upper-middle class families who have "parents with attitude" as well... while the kids of major politicians and Fortune 500 CEOs are safe... they'd have to do serious research on everybody they plan to sue to avoid getting the wrong person... one who can afford to defend in court... willing to come out and fight, and who is either smart enough to research or knows someone smart enough to research the real issues involved. Those are the kind of people who'd be willing to start a boycott campaign on purpose.
While the idea that "taping and tape-swapping is legal 'fair use', recording to disk and fileswapping is PIRACY" isn't enough to win unless one is very lucky with a jury... a few people bringing this up are likely to get useful coverage whether or not the media plays along.
The American people don't play well with the idea "We're a mighty corporation and we can fuck up whomever we please"... and that is basically what the "regardless of" part of the story will tell any reader.
A win for them would be destroying 1000 people even their mothers don't like much. With 1000 people (which I doubt got researched past 'don't target politicians' kids) their luck has to run out.
I hope the Boycott RIAA people have real big pipes and heavy-dut servers. I expect them to get a shitload of traffic very, very soon.
There does seem to be a certain amount of public interest, googling boycott RIAA gets me 6300+ hits.
These guys are headed for the tarpits. We need to think of ways to speed their progress into oblivion.
The RIAA doesn't sell records. So an anti-RIAA boycott sort of has to be directed at the major labels that tell the RIAA what to do.
Of course the reason why the RIAA is being out front and public and is making itself hated is to take the heat off the major labels.
A record industry music boycott sticks the heat right where it belongs.
To destroy them, just do all your music spending on independent artists and tell everyone else you know to do the same.
Most people don't appreciate just how fragile the position of the major labels is. They're all losing money, and so far, the music label CEOs have not only gotten away with using PIRACY!!! as an excuse with Congress, but with the multinationals that own them..
Simply refusing to buy music plays into their hands, they'll say "People refuse to buy our products because THEY'RE ALL STEALING THEM VIA P2P AND WE NEED NEW LAWS TO PROTECT US!!!"
Buying from independents will send exactly the right message both to Congress and to the companies that own the major labels.
Enough of us do this and the companies that own the major labels will be forced to dump them... lest their own stock prices follow their record companies value straight into the toilet.
Just a few percentage points of major record company sales transferred into the profit margins of independent artists and the war will be over, settled over the smoking corpses of the Big 5.
This should only take getting 1M people on board.
And the person who observes the RIAA boycott as I advise will get chances to find a lot of good new music of whatever kind you like that hasn't been dumbed down for the faceless masses RIAA product is aimed at.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent.
In short, the best way to beat one monied interest is with another monied interest (the insurance lobbies and the drug makers' lobbies are constantly at each others' throats.
I agree, but one can't always depend on having a group with money who happens to agree with one's political agenda, and even if there is one who would benefit, one can't guarantee that they'll take a wide enough view of their interests to do anything about it. I remember writing the American Electronics Association about content industry-friendly legislation years ago... and got ignored.
Also remember that there is another way to buy effective political representation. Would you use the word "ineffective" to describe either the NRA or the AARP? A mass organization that can aggregate millions of small contributions into a few big ones via PAC can also work well.
Not that it's likely that the "geek" community will build one. This would require somebody with a megabuck or more to throw in to hire people like you or Morgan Reed to front it and experienced political activists to get the infrastructure together. The people who can afford to do this are exactly the people with the "smug self-satisfaction" you rightfully sneer at.
You are simply wrong. He knows better, but would prefer our efforts be misdirected.
No non-profit organization representing individuals can lobby with effectiveness comparable to that of a political lobbyist who can write checks or in the case of an organization which is technically non-profit such as Morgan Reed's (or more accurately, Microsloth's) Association for Competitive Technology, can tell his clients who can write checks who "deserves" to receive political campaign contributions...
Believe me, the staff members for any Congressman or Senator know which lobbyists can bring them money and which can only bring hot air.
While the EFF is valuable, if we want real political change in our favor, a small group of us will have to come up with the megabuck or more required to build the infrastructure for a NRA/AARP style PAC (Political Action Committee) that can raise money for candidates and actively campaign for or against candidates, and all the rest of us are going to have to come up with the money to make the actual campaign contributions.
All the EFF can do with real effectiveness is put out fires through the legal system.
No matter how good the arguments made for legislation made by an EFF staff member, they're going to be trumped by someone like Reed who can talk about the companies like Microsoft he represents. Things like the DMCA didn't pass because the EFF was asleep at the switch, they passed because lobbyists with money behind them had a much more effective argument. . . campaign money.
Parents with money, generally with political influence of their own they think might be enhanced by having their kid become a political "fixer". (as in "the fix is in")
Read it and you'll see why.
Here's a good example:
The government isn't evil or invisible, it responds to the interests of its people.
Yes, and "its people" are those who participate meaningfully in the political process by donating thousands of dollars to the candidates of their choice.
Generally, one sees these techniques used by politicians and lawyers orally in courtrooms, putting them in the form of text makes them a lot easier to study. I think you deserve thanks for this.
I was delighted and a bit surprised to see how many other people cut straight through the spin you were putting on known facts... and the posts that demonstrate this best are the ones you didn't respond to. Apparently, we both underestimated the level of political awareness of some of the Slashdot readers. I suspect that you expected only softball questions.
A response to this post asking about why congressmen are seriously interested in changing careers to lobbying might have been of great interest. Other posts from people who saw you coming:
The funniest thing said about you was "Obviously, this guy is a little idealistic." But seriously, if you were an idealist really trying to make the world as opposed to your checking account a better place, we all know you'd be doing something else for a living. Making a better world for MS is not the same thing as making a better world, or even a better place for anyone to do high-tech. I'm not linking that post, I'm sure the author has figured out just how far he put his foot in it.
What are ACT's positions on:
Do you think any real ACT position on the above has any substantial support here?
Based on your posts and interview responses, I do not believe that you want effective "geek activism". There are areas where the goals of one of your clients, MS and the goals of the rest of the technology community are diametrically opposed and a politically effective high-tech and/or Open Source might make your life a whole lot more difficult.
Also, move I above F, and kill off all the postcards. Finally, move faxes and email way up. One of the only good things to come out of 9/11 is that Members of Congress have been forced to use email as a preferred method of communication. Paper mail and knickknacks have become harder to get into the Capitol.
Perhaps they respond to your e-mail, which shows up at addresses not exactly in the public domain. If I were a major contributor to my Congresswoman, I'm sure she'd find some way to make it possible to communicate with her that doesn't bottleneck through a webform.
A quote from
By repeating the RIAA party line on "stealing", you are helping make that future possible. My guess is that this is your real intent.
Putting a broadcast-quality music track onto a P2P network or Internet radio is giving it free publicity. Would an RIAA weenie or artist whine if a commercial radio station decided to put their track in heavy rotation without an "ADD" fee of $1000 per play?
The difference between this and the radio:
BTW, I metamodded your post down. It doesn't rate insightful. There is no insight in it. Unfortunately, /. doesn't have a "Propaganda" category yet.
It doesn't take an economist or a lawyer to understand point 4 - sharing copyrighted content that you do not have rights to millions of people would have DEFINITELY have a substantial impact upon the value of the copyrighted work.
The evidence available from non-RIAA studies and from empirical evidence shows that the value of copyrighted work increases when redistributed to millions of people.
The record industry obviously knows this at an internal level, that's why any track played on a commercial radio can be regarded as a paid advertisement for the actual CD product.
128K MP3s distributed via payola-compensated FM or P2P or via Internet Radio is not the product. A product for which there is no market can not be considered a "commercial product" in any sense but a narrowly legal one whose definition comes from laws made by politicians 0wn3d by the *AA.
It's merely a promotional item which the public uses to make buy/don't buy decisions about the actual product, either a CD or better than broadcast quality downloadable tracks from iTunes.
That's why independent musicians often release their own work via P2P channels. Only in the dreamworld occupied only by *AA publicists, you (is that redundant?), and politicians 0wn3D by the *Aa do people buy CDs without listening to at least some of the content first.
In the real world, it doesn't matter whether a person makes a buying decision via P2P download, Internet Radio, or FM radio with respect to a decision to buy making money for the artist.
Why don't you wander off and go tell Eminem that the person who uploaded his entire current album to P2P destroyed the value of all of his work.
Of course, in the real world, not the one you live in, his album went immediately to #1 and he's crying about P2P all the way to the bank. And there might be some personal risk for you in telling him this to his face, he is not reputed to suffer fools gladly.
One other thing about your anti-piracy whining. If the *AA really cared about piracy, they'd be using the politicians they own to do whatever it takes to get the Asian countries in which bootleg copies of CDs are pressed to stop instead of the cosmetic efforts in process now.
The *AA problem isn't piracy, they merely want to strike so much fear into the public that they will only download MP3s from "approved" music industry sites... which would effectively cut off independent artists from using the Net as a promotional channel. That's the real bottom line. I work to publicize an independent artist and finding people willing to host her MP3s for P2P is very difficult because of the RIAA attack on P2P users. Of course, that means that the RIAA attack is succeeding, at least in the US... the personal solution... host them in a free country where the *AA didn't subvert the political process.
Do you guys really think that nobody has managed to figure out the obvious?
Wrong.
You've never heard of mandatory broadcasting licensing? (which includes royalties paid via Performing Rights Societies paid to the composer) Did radio stations suddenly shift to playing 30 second song samples without telling anyone?
You've never heard that tape swapping via analog tape is fair use not requiring permission of the copyright owner?
You really should try sources of information other than *AA propaganda before you try to sound like an informed adult discussing a public policy issue, you've already revealed your ignorance to the public.
You compare copyright infringement governed by copyright laws made through the legal bribery of Federal elected officials in collusion with the *AA organizations to rape, torture, and murder?
What planet are you from? And why don't you go back where you came from?
Of course, a more relevant question is how much is an anonymous PR firm working for one of the *AA organizations or one of the major labels paying you to unload this swill on slashdot?
The other possibility is that you've been exposed to so much *AA propaganda that you believe it to be fact... which speaks to your intelligence.
Eminem's latest album was "prereleased" to P2P a month in advance. Tell him about the income he was deprived of. It is generally believed that the P2P acted as free promotion for the album, which went immediately to #1 in sales.
Ask Radiohead about how using P2P has deprived them of sales.
There are plenty of bands around which case studies of Internet marketing can be done.
If making music publically available without restriction was bad for music publishers, why do record companies pay radio stations to play their music in the modern version of payola?
A 128K MP3 is simply a promotional item. It can influence a buying decision whether played back on the radio, downloaded, or played back as streaming audio via Internet Radio. You say "it's a product"? I don't see anyone buying them and neither do you. Putting one up on a P2P network is simply the equivalent of putting a track on radio stations and getting it to a few potential customers free of charge.
This isn't about protecting artists. Nobody who knows about how record label contracts work would believe this, though perhaps you do.
This is simply about conditioning the public to fear downloading even explicitly legal files from any locations other than a record industry approved pay-per-download source.
They simply want to cut off independent artists from access to the public in large masses, they want to be able to say to an indie "you can make a living in music with us or not at all".
An artist can make a pretty decent living selling 10K records at a per-unit profit of $5 each to supplement touring. It's a lot harder at 25 cents a record AFTER the record label's version of its costs have been repaid. The industry wants to take the choice away from musicians technology gave options to.
Easy.
FM broadcast usage... it's called mandatory broadcast licensing.
Analog tape recording and swapping, legally defined as "fair usage".
Why is the digital equivalent (128K MP3 via P2P) of taping and tape trading illegal?
Campaign contributions aka legal bribery to elected Federal officians. If you want to construct some great moral principle out of this, be my guest. But don't expect to be treated with respect for expressing your viewpoint.
Even if you are being paid to spread RIAA propaganda here via some anonymous PR firm, you really can't expect respect for that even from the people who sign your paycheck.
If you're saying this because you actually believe *AA propaganda about "protecting starving artists", you're too dumb to deserve respect.
In this case, their client is the US government and indirectly, the Hollywood cartel.
The image they projected is exactly what they wanted you to see.
Anyone here really think that top priority among cases doesn't automatically go the billion dollar companies and the "little guy" poster child they cited wasn't chosen specifically for future public relations value?
Just because someone represents bad guys for a living doesn't mean he's going to come across as a cross between Satan and Barney the Dinosaur possessed by Charlie Manson. A trial lawyer that sends the jury screaming out of the jury box just isn't worth a whole lot to anyone he represents.
I'd give their interview a "9" for spin control and a "5" for content... it was worth reading both for the information and the pointers on technique and if any are around, I'd like to thank them for showing up.
Now that's the DMCA in action, protecting your freedom! Oh yes, the DMCA is going to be just excellent for technology research and innovation.
The DMCA was written by people with the same love of democracy and of the advancement of human knowledge as Osama bin Laden has. And most of the people who voted for it can accurately be described the same way.
"People always get the local government they deserve."
E.E. "Doc" Smith
I have no sympathy for people who parrot RIAA propaganda as if it were true and believe that you should disappear.
The only legal difference between "fair use" analog taping and swapping of broadcast-quality music and digital recording and fileswapping is that the RIAA paid off certain politicians to make updating of common use illegal.
The purpose is to make it impossible to distribute non-RIAA content through the Internet because people fear that your thug RIAA buddies will show up with subpoenas if they log onto a P2P network.
The musicians who upload songs to P2P hoping to get the word out about their music don't want copyright to go away, just the RIAA thugs and "useful fools" like you who make excuses for their anti-social activities.
i-T-u-n-e-s (note your mini-spellng lesson) was created by APPLE CORPORATION. You know, those guys who make MacIntosh personal computers. The guys who are also giving independent artists access to iTunes through CDBaby, which is hardly anything that the RIAA would either do or want anyone else to.
Yes, the stupidity of some people amazes me, and you are a prime example.
Thought of changing your handle to pencilneck? (there's a song Pencilneck Geek by Fred Blassie that reminds me of you.)
By the time it hit the record stores, everybody into his music already knew it was a winner based on either downloading it or word of mouth.
Went straight to #1.
I keep wondering if he uploaded it himself for fun and profit.
Gershwin aside, how many of these guys died broke because of record label contracts deliberately constructed to screw the artist?
How many of those records are sitting in vaults with no plans by the labels ever to make them available to the public, but if you upload your copy so kids can hear great music of the past, you're going to get sued?
If you want to honor the memory of great seminal artists of the past, help break the record industry who generally rat-fucked them by buying music ONLY from non-RIAA independent artists.
If you just want to listen to their music which is by and large, out of print, buy music ONLY from non-RIAA independent artists
If you just stop buying music, the record labels CEOs can go to Congress and their bosses and say PIRATES are stealing, not buying. What kind of bad new laws can get rammed through Congress? Want to find out?
If you buy from independent musicians instead, major label profits, indie profits skyrocket, and you'll be sending the right message... the message to Congress: People will buy, but not from thugs. The message to the CEOs the record label presidents report to? They've hired retarded fuckheads who are taking the value of their companies down by the day.
Break the industry and the new buyers are going to be people with a clue about technology who know as well as you and I do that music sitting idle in a vault makes profit for nobody.
You want to hear that rare/out of print Count Basie disk? Odds on, a few months after these labels go under new management and ownership, you'll probably be able to buy it using CD-on-demand technology or download it at .99 cents at track.
There is now no reason for a record ever to go out of print.
When we say the labels are using obsolete business models, those of us with a clue are totally serious.
Why don't labels have everything they've got down to Edison Wax Cylnders digitized and ready to burn? One time cost, indefinite profit stream, and if an Great Old One ever comes back in style, don't burn one-off, crank up a CD pressing plant and make a million or 6.
Alternately, if they dont want to do this, why not take big tax writeoffs and donate them to the Library of Congress or the Smithsonian?
They're sitting on them instead because that's what their predecessors did, and they don't have a clue of their own.
It's tarpit time for these dinosaurs, and it's time to give them a shove in that direction.
Why? Same reason as the RIAA, control of distribution channels. The MPAA isn't just Jack Valenti, there are guys who know that if the next Steven Spielberg decides "fuck Hollywood, I'm putting a PC render farm in my closet" around next-gen technology and goes straight to selling DVDs and broadband distribution direct to people's TVs... they might be looking at the same kind of trouble the record labels are.
Apparently, they think that megapromotion budgets, control of theaters, megaproduction budgets, and even a fair product at a fair price (yes, I think DVD movies are fair value for money) isn't enough, they want to be in a position to say you make movies for us or not at all.
Even Hilary Rosen concedes that this model is dead in the record industry.
The RIAA is not only taking the heat for their member companies, they're taking it for the MPAA, too. Is there some relationship between the two other than sending contributions and lobbyists to the same people that isn't obvious?
Anonymous proxy servers.
You mean the generation whose recording off the radio on analog tapes and sharing the music with friends turned the Grateful Dead and later Metallica into multiplatinum artists? For us, that was "fair usage".
That's why kids don't grow up thinking that sharing music is piracy or theft.
The only explanation they need is "remember when you used to record off the radio and trade tapes with friends? Do you know that if you do this using your computer to record and the Internet, the RIAA will sue your asses?"
And if they ask "Why, what's the difference?", just tell them the truth, that they bribed a bunch of politicians to make new laws.
Who needs to be a young l337 h4xx0r to get that?
Basically, what's really needed is a change of culture.
The kids need to be convinced that buying from a record store is no longer cool and they should spend their money instead on indie artists.
A successful boycott means the value of that company will be depressed by owning a major record label.
Just a few percent drop in gross revenues for the labels matched by a massive increase in indie sales means a massive drop in investor confidence in the companies that own them and questions fron stock analysts like "when are you going to dump that turkey?" They're going to unload as fast as they can for the best price they can in order to avoid going down the toilet with their entertainment properties.
I think Sony's going to have something very big for sale real soon now... and they'll be selling what's in the master vaults and artist contracts only. What investor group is going to want a bunch of suits who reduced the value of their company by a factor of several?
I now know why Apple didn't buy Universal. They figured that if they wait a few months, they could buy the IP and contracts for a few hundred megabucks instead of $4,000,000.
A month ago, I figured the RIAA labels had a few years to go. Now, I'll be surprised if any of the labels are under current management by summer 2004.
Though it's a fair bet that anything you hear on commercial radio or can find on the shelf at a record store is RIAA. . . but how hard is it for any of us to find indie band websites?
They also have to avoid upper-middle class families who have "parents with attitude" as well... while the kids of major politicians and Fortune 500 CEOs are safe... they'd have to do serious research on everybody they plan to sue to avoid getting the wrong person... one who can afford to defend in court... willing to come out and fight, and who is either smart enough to research or knows someone smart enough to research the real issues involved. Those are the kind of people who'd be willing to start a boycott campaign on purpose.
While the idea that "taping and tape-swapping is legal 'fair use', recording to disk and fileswapping is PIRACY" isn't enough to win unless one is very lucky with a jury... a few people bringing this up are likely to get useful coverage whether or not the media plays along.
The American people don't play well with the idea "We're a mighty corporation and we can fuck up whomever we please"... and that is basically what the "regardless of" part of the story will tell any reader.
A win for them would be destroying 1000 people even their mothers don't like much. With 1000 people (which I doubt got researched past 'don't target politicians' kids) their luck has to run out.
I hope the Boycott RIAA people have real big pipes and heavy-dut servers. I expect them to get a shitload of traffic very, very soon.
There does seem to be a certain amount of public interest, googling boycott RIAA gets me 6300+ hits.
These guys are headed for the tarpits. We need to think of ways to speed their progress into oblivion.
Of course the reason why the RIAA is being out front and public and is making itself hated is to take the heat off the major labels.
A record industry music boycott sticks the heat right where it belongs.
To destroy them, just do all your music spending on independent artists and tell everyone else you know to do the same.
Most people don't appreciate just how fragile the position of the major labels is. They're all losing money, and so far, the music label CEOs have not only gotten away with using PIRACY!!! as an excuse with Congress, but with the multinationals that own them..
Simply refusing to buy music plays into their hands, they'll say "People refuse to buy our products because THEY'RE ALL STEALING THEM VIA P2P AND WE NEED NEW LAWS TO PROTECT US!!!"
Buying from independents will send exactly the right message both to Congress and to the companies that own the major labels.
Enough of us do this and the companies that own the major labels will be forced to dump them... lest their own stock prices follow their record companies value straight into the toilet.
Just a few percentage points of major record company sales transferred into the profit margins of independent artists and the war will be over, settled over the smoking corpses of the Big 5.
This should only take getting 1M people on board.
And the person who observes the RIAA boycott as I advise will get chances to find a lot of good new music of whatever kind you like that hasn't been dumbed down for the faceless masses RIAA product is aimed at.