I've covered this before, but it was in another thread. You didn't pay for the content, for the film. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true. You do not own the information on that DVD. If you did, you could sell it to whomever you wanted, or edit in lots of swear words and broadcast it. What you paid for was the right to view the DVD in a manner consistent with a myriad of copyright laws and licensing agreements, and those laws and agreements say that you can't use an unlicensed player.
I would like a link to the other thread, alright?
Yes, it is not yours. Technically the movie is intellectual property, so you do not own it. In the same way, it would be illegal for you to make illegal copies, and it would also be illegal for you to claim the a movie as your own (i.e., cross out steven spielberg and put in joe pirate)
Buying the Videodisk/Tape/CD/DVD or whatever media that you choose basically has a licenceing agreement saying that you and only you can watch it. Basically it is illegal for you to start a blockbuster with tapes that you bought at target because when you bought the target tapes they came with a licence agreement that you agreed to by buying the tape (incedentally, I talked with the local video rental guy here and he said that the DVD's cost him a few hundred dollars apeice).
Why you think that all these people wanted to keep DeCSS for illegal purposes I am not understanding. If the 2600 staff made illegal copies of DVD's, it would do them no good because they haven't got DVD players anyway. I doubt, with their legal staff, that they would be stupid enough to sell pirated DVD's on the streetcorner.
Another thing that bothers me about this encryption is the ignorance around it. Technically, someone with the cash and the resources could build a burner that copies everything bit-by-bit and encryption would be incapable of stopping it.
This whole thing is a control issue. If the people who hacked CSS did so because they wanted a linux player (and not the illegal purposes you speak of), and there was already one for linux, I doubt they would bother. I think it is unfair of the MPAA to have a legal windows compatible player, but make it illegal to make one for linux. If they didn't want them to crack it, do what they ask. The people who use linux are, for the most part, more computer savvy than the ones using windows or MacOS, and have the skills to crack weak crypto (like CSS)
If I am a kook because I use my personal website to relay my beleifs, then Damnit I'm glad that I am a kook.
Why you are convinced that I have never created anything of inherent value in my life I do not understand. Other than that it is a meaningless insult to me.
I assume that your last comment is telling me that you are supportive of lars' crusade against napster. FYI, I do not and have never downloaded any metallica songs, and the majority of MP3's I do have are legal, that is to say that I own the CD's. I do beleive that artists should be compensated for their work.
In a noninsulting way, I do wish to know why you consider my site to be an eyesore, rather than tell you to go fuck yourself I would like to learn how to improve my site. Nerdnetwork is my first website and if I do others I want them to look good.
Christianity most definitely did not provide framework for social stability. Religeon has, in most cases, started far more wars than fixed screwed countries. Want an example? Look at ireland.
Christianity has always viewed science as evil. Look up brutus sometime. He was killed by the church because he beleived that the earth revolved around the sun.
Economic leftists need to study history. (While social leftists are fine.) Your website shows me that you have yet to form your own opinions on important matters and this is exactly why the young and idealistic do not deserve the right to vote. They can do too much harm.
Okay, and since the old are wise and pessemistic about new candidates, lets ban everyone over, say, age 40, so these restrictions affect (or will affect) you sometime soon.
Of course I don't beleive that. I'm just writing it to show the hypocrisy of your last statement. A concept that perhaps you don't understand, maybe his website is under development?
You, sir, do not have the right to tell anyone whether they deserve to vote or not. We all live in the same fucking country, the person we elect affects us all and just because we are younger than you does not make us automatically dumber. If you want to see a website made by a 15-year old, that looks good, go to my website at www.nerdnetwork.net. Attaching someones design is a petty, stupid thing to do.
"Also, I see a lot of teenagers bitching that they cannot vote. OK kid, tell you what. When you have proven that you have some degree of responsiblity, that you understand what it is to support yourself and see large amounts of your money being taken from you by force by well-meaning fools who will use it to assuage their own guilt, when you understand the consequences of your actions and the fact that some mistakes will outlive you, then you can vote."
We're not all bad.
I personally, have never gone on a shooting rampage at my school, run anyone down, stolen anything, or any other bad stereotype that you could probably think to associate with the word teenager.
Why the hell do you think we're bitching, anyway? Teenagers are the last minority to be unable to vote. The rest (blacks, women, etc) have had their voting rights granted. Would we want to vote if we didn't care about our country?
Currently a man can go to war, fight, be wounded or die fighting for his country and still never have the chance to vote. If his country meant nothing to him, he would have moved to canada to escape the draft. Such a man loves their country.
Another statistic maybe you should look at is that 1/3 of all teenagers are actually more informed of the current issues than their parents. Who would you want electing, ignorant middle aged americans or educated, aware teens?
In 22 years the youngest of todays teenagers will be able to run this country. I hope they will be more accepting of the younger generation than you.
If we switch to online voting, it is almost inevitable that there will be a hacking attack on the site, thereby making all the votes from that site unusable.
If online voting gains enough popularity, the goverment might consider closing the physical voting booths so those who don't or can't afford to have a computer cannot vote. Which means they won't elect a candidate that represents them, and the issues they care about, thus turning the online voting booth into Billionaresforbushorgore.
Porn isn't at all the most damaging content on the internet. In case you people screaming "OH WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" have forgotten, almost every kid has seen a pair of boobs, early in life. And they might have seen some pubic area too, even earlier in life. How will seeing a pair of breasts hurt some kid? Ask yourself again, how will being lied to and censored by your parents hurt some kid?
If I want to see violence on the internet, I'll go to a major international news site.
If I want to build bombs, I have a host of them I could go to. Most censorware doesn't block bomb building information.
If I want to view info on how to make GHB or meth I can go to a host of sites. See above for censorware info.
If I want to break the censorware, I can go to peacefire.org, censorware.org, or any other place that mirrors such info.
Quit censoring you idiot. If you're using smartcards then look at the logs and ban the accounts viewing hardcorexxxmegababes.com. Don't make everyone suffer. Remember that freedom of speech means nothing if you cannot hear it.
Arresting someone for talking on a cellphone is not what some of you philidelphians should be calling "enforcing" your laws. I suppose if you got arrested for using your palm/newton/startac or whatever PDA/Organizer you choose to use it would be different. I would be all for arrest were he driving while talking on it (which I know is flamebait but drivers who don't have the decency to pull over to the shoulder really annoy me), but I find it hard to beleive he would be driving in an area gridlocked with people.
As far as the protesters go, I was not there and therefore cannot say how fairly the cops were treating people. From what I saw on the news, I think the arrested party should be the feminazis who had defaced copies of the statue of liberty, claiming that the right to kill their child was in the constitution. Fuck you. Nobody's holding you back, if you want to go to some country where you want to kill, go ahead. Don't stay here and ridicule this country because you don't like one part of it.
The subject, respect, is probably why the cops were arresting people. If they were indeed arresting people based on race, PDA's/Cells and/or their clothes, I respect the protesters a lot more than the cops, because they weren't afraid to show their opinions, and at a political convention that's what it's all about. I respect the hackers who were standing around far more than the ones attaching cops, pushing right to abortion by ridiculing american icons, and others who were trying to cause riots. Having a right to your own opinion is what makes this country great. That you cannot express it freely is sad.
Just because some slashdotters will find it of intrest, I totally agree with you. The HUD for the wearable I am building is actually mounted inside a baseball cap to be descreet and it has a shield on the side so I have complete privacy. It also looks cool and because I have wires running down my shirt most people leave me alone;-)
Hey loser, you might as well not use that stupid cover of AC anymore. Your exclusive use of br as your sig makes me more assured of your assholism. That stupid sig and your stupid message has been broadcasted over every single slashdot story about carnivore, or napster. Dickweed, leave us alone.
What you do not seem to understand is that this is all a control issue.
As far as I know, the judge in this case is not a geek, and probably does not frequent slashdot.
He may be fooled by the MPAA's lawyers into thinking that this is all a technology issue, and make a wrong decision. The people who cracked the dvd encryption did so because they wanted a DVD player for linux, not just to anger the MPAA (which would probably serve no purpose anyway). By breaking the encryption, there is hope for a dvd player for linux, but if this is decided to be illegal, then the MPAA will hold the code as their copyright and there will never be a linux player. The mirrors, they won't matter. If the MPAA gets pissed and owns the copyright, they will never licence it to a company who will create a commercial linux player because they will be bitter over the linux fans who cracked it. Quite clearly, you don't care too much about your freedom of speech. When you have a right or freedom that you care about taken away, you should expect the same reaction as yours from others.
I must give credit where it is needed, so this piece came out of the salon article Courtney love does the math. It does an excellent job of showing that we should be against the RIAA and record labels, not the artists, and not lars ulrich. Lars is worried about people stealing his music because he gets paid so little. This article made this very apparent to me.
I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?
They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.
That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.
That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.
The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)
So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.
The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.
The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.
All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.
Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.
If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.
Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals... zero!
How much does the record company make?
They grossed $11 million.
It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.
The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.
They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.
Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.
So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.
superrob, the people who will get hurt by doing the boycott will be the artists, not the RIAA. The artists can starve but god help us if one of those lawyers misses a car payment on his rolls.
And who will get screwed in the end by everyone staying away from all RIAA endorsed music? The artists. The artists will lose money before the lawyers lose business. Everyone knows that.
Getting rich from it? I beleive the lawyers working for and against the RIAA will be getting rich. As for the artists, who we really care about, not the music companies, they will be stuck paying more bills than ever to pay for these bastard lawyers.
Contrary to what the man in the solid-gold ferrari (lars) would like you to beleive, artists aren't starving to death from the big bad napster. Limp bizkit has embraced napster, encouraged their fans (like me) to have napster and use napster and go ahead and trade limp MP3's on napster. Limp bizkit got free concert sponsorship by napster, limp got money, limps fans get a free concert, all groups get cash and publicity and are generally happy.
Lars, on the other hand, has rejected napster. He has made derogatory comments toward napster, he has alienated 330,000 of his fans, he got a lot of bad publicity, he loses money from the people who are sick of his actions and refuse to buy metallica CD's.
What all the artists and regular people saying the evils of napster seem to forget is that NAPSTER IS FOR AND BY PEOPLE WHO LOVE MUSIC! Shawn fanning created it because he needed a better way to find MP3's. Software developers for napster created it because if they hated napster, they wouldn't be working for it. The people with napster are supporting it by having their collection available to everyone else on napster. The so-called "pirates" lars has spoken of don't exist. People who have (had) metallica songs on napster and were booted off weren't snickering while downloading songs and saying "haha look at lars we're stealing from him because we hate him and his band". The people downloading it did so because they liked metallica. If they didn't like metallica, they would have either deleted the songs or never downloaded them in the first place.
None of the people on there are on napster for the sole purpose of spiting, stealing from and angering artists. They are on napster because they enjoy listening to music. Napster users buy more music, as the independent study showed. Is this hurting the RIAA? That the people with this software are buying more music? If anything, more music being bought means more dough for music execs. If the RIAA endorsed napster, we wouldn't have 300,000 alienated fans, we wouldn't have the dumb puppet man, we wouldn't have this lawsuit and we would still have napster.
When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it.
The people saying this is alright for the FBI to do clearly do not care about the removal of their privacy. When a right that such people care about is removed, they should expect similar reactions from other people.
Hey man, as much as I appreciate my right to privacy, the FBI can read all my mail too. Even if it is a carnivore, it still can't eat That much pink stuff without exploding. Better yet, since it is a carnivore, it should eat that newly imported flock of fresian sheep with a form of mad cow disease, go insane, and die.
Slashdot Mirror
I've covered this before, but it was in another thread. You didn't pay for the content, for the film. I know that sounds stupid, but it's true. You do not own the information on that DVD. If you did, you could sell it to whomever you wanted, or edit in lots of swear words and broadcast it. What you paid for was the right to view the DVD in a manner consistent with a myriad of copyright laws and licensing agreements, and those laws and agreements say that you can't use an unlicensed player.
I would like a link to the other thread, alright?
Yes, it is not yours. Technically the movie is intellectual property, so you do not own it. In the same way, it would be illegal for you to make illegal copies, and it would also be illegal for you to claim the a movie as your own (i.e., cross out steven spielberg and put in joe pirate)
Buying the Videodisk/Tape/CD/DVD or whatever media that you choose basically has a licenceing agreement saying that you and only you can watch it. Basically it is illegal for you to start a blockbuster with tapes that you bought at target because when you bought the target tapes they came with a licence agreement that you agreed to by buying the tape (incedentally, I talked with the local video rental guy here and he said that the DVD's cost him a few hundred dollars apeice).
Why you think that all these people wanted to keep DeCSS for illegal purposes I am not understanding. If the 2600 staff made illegal copies of DVD's, it would do them no good because they haven't got DVD players anyway. I doubt, with their legal staff, that they would be stupid enough to sell pirated DVD's on the streetcorner.
Another thing that bothers me about this encryption is the ignorance around it. Technically, someone with the cash and the resources could build a burner that copies everything bit-by-bit and encryption would be incapable of stopping it.
This whole thing is a control issue. If the people who hacked CSS did so because they wanted a linux player (and not the illegal purposes you speak of), and there was already one for linux, I doubt they would bother. I think it is unfair of the MPAA to have a legal windows compatible player, but make it illegal to make one for linux. If they didn't want them to crack it, do what they ask. The people who use linux are, for the most part, more computer savvy than the ones using windows or MacOS, and have the skills to crack weak crypto (like CSS)
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
If I am a kook because I use my personal website to relay my beleifs, then Damnit I'm glad that I am a kook.
Why you are convinced that I have never created anything of inherent value in my life I do not understand. Other than that it is a meaningless insult to me.
I assume that your last comment is telling me that you are supportive of lars' crusade against napster. FYI, I do not and have never downloaded any metallica songs, and the majority of MP3's I do have are legal, that is to say that I own the CD's. I do beleive that artists should be compensated for their work.
In a noninsulting way, I do wish to know why you consider my site to be an eyesore, rather than tell you to go fuck yourself I would like to learn how to improve my site. Nerdnetwork is my first website and if I do others I want them to look good.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Christianity most definitely did not provide framework for social stability. Religeon has, in most cases, started far more wars than fixed screwed countries. Want an example? Look at ireland.
Christianity has always viewed science as evil. Look up brutus sometime. He was killed by the church because he beleived that the earth revolved around the sun.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
with parental consent I think one can be drafted at 16 or 17 i think.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Bush declares US a christian state?
SHUDDER
That is fucking scary dude. I think bush being advised by Anti-porn.
I also found another intresting news story about george and antiporns friendship at http://www.stileproject.com/june17.html
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Economic leftists need to study history. (While social leftists are fine.) Your website shows me that you have yet to form your own opinions on important matters and this is exactly why the young and idealistic do not deserve the right to vote. They can do too much harm.
Okay, and since the old are wise and pessemistic about new candidates, lets ban everyone over, say, age 40, so these restrictions affect (or will affect) you sometime soon.
Of course I don't beleive that. I'm just writing it to show the hypocrisy of your last statement. A concept that perhaps you don't understand, maybe his website is under development?
You, sir, do not have the right to tell anyone whether they deserve to vote or not. We all live in the same fucking country, the person we elect affects us all and just because we are younger than you does not make us automatically dumber. If you want to see a website made by a 15-year old, that looks good, go to my website at www.nerdnetwork.net. Attaching someones design is a petty, stupid thing to do.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
"Also, I see a lot of teenagers bitching that they cannot vote. OK kid, tell you what. When you have proven that you have some degree of responsiblity, that you understand what it is to support yourself and see large amounts of your money being taken from you by force by well-meaning fools who will use it to assuage their own guilt, when you understand the consequences of your actions and the fact that some mistakes will outlive you, then you can vote."
We're not all bad.
I personally, have never gone on a shooting rampage at my school, run anyone down, stolen anything, or any other bad stereotype that you could probably think to associate with the word teenager.
Why the hell do you think we're bitching, anyway? Teenagers are the last minority to be unable to vote. The rest (blacks, women, etc) have had their voting rights granted. Would we want to vote if we didn't care about our country?
Currently a man can go to war, fight, be wounded or die fighting for his country and still never have the chance to vote. If his country meant nothing to him, he would have moved to canada to escape the draft. Such a man loves their country.
Another statistic maybe you should look at is that 1/3 of all teenagers are actually more informed of the current issues than their parents. Who would you want electing, ignorant middle aged americans or educated, aware teens?
In 22 years the youngest of todays teenagers will be able to run this country. I hope they will be more accepting of the younger generation than you.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
You said it brutha! Jesse can kick your governors ASS!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
If we switch to online voting, it is almost inevitable that there will be a hacking attack on the site, thereby making all the votes from that site unusable.
If online voting gains enough popularity, the goverment might consider closing the physical voting booths so those who don't or can't afford to have a computer cannot vote. Which means they won't elect a candidate that represents them, and the issues they care about, thus turning the online voting booth into Billionaresforbushorgore.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Porn isn't at all the most damaging content on the internet. In case you people screaming "OH WON'T SOMEBODY PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" have forgotten, almost every kid has seen a pair of boobs, early in life. And they might have seen some pubic area too, even earlier in life. How will seeing a pair of breasts hurt some kid? Ask yourself again, how will being lied to and censored by your parents hurt some kid?
If I want to see violence on the internet, I'll go to a major international news site.
If I want to build bombs, I have a host of them I could go to. Most censorware doesn't block bomb building information.
If I want to view info on how to make GHB or meth I can go to a host of sites. See above for censorware info.
If I want to break the censorware, I can go to peacefire.org, censorware.org, or any other place that mirrors such info.
Quit censoring you idiot. If you're using smartcards then look at the logs and ban the accounts viewing hardcorexxxmegababes.com. Don't make everyone suffer. Remember that freedom of speech means nothing if you cannot hear it.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Yes, I also would like to vote for an inatimate carbon rod for office. Like they say on the simpsons, IN ROD WE TRUST!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Arresting someone for talking on a cellphone is not what some of you philidelphians should be calling "enforcing" your laws. I suppose if you got arrested for using your palm/newton/startac or whatever PDA/Organizer you choose to use it would be different. I would be all for arrest were he driving while talking on it (which I know is flamebait but drivers who don't have the decency to pull over to the shoulder really annoy me), but I find it hard to beleive he would be driving in an area gridlocked with people.
As far as the protesters go, I was not there and therefore cannot say how fairly the cops were treating people. From what I saw on the news, I think the arrested party should be the feminazis who had defaced copies of the statue of liberty, claiming that the right to kill their child was in the constitution. Fuck you. Nobody's holding you back, if you want to go to some country where you want to kill, go ahead. Don't stay here and ridicule this country because you don't like one part of it.
The subject, respect, is probably why the cops were arresting people. If they were indeed arresting people based on race, PDA's/Cells and/or their clothes, I respect the protesters a lot more than the cops, because they weren't afraid to show their opinions, and at a political convention that's what it's all about. I respect the hackers who were standing around far more than the ones attaching cops, pushing right to abortion by ridiculing american icons, and others who were trying to cause riots. Having a right to your own opinion is what makes this country great. That you cannot express it freely is sad.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Just because some slashdotters will find it of intrest, I totally agree with you. The HUD for the wearable I am building is actually mounted inside a baseball cap to be descreet and it has a shield on the side so I have complete privacy. It also looks cool and because I have wires running down my shirt most people leave me alone ;-)
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Hey loser, you might as well not use that stupid cover of AC anymore. Your exclusive use of br as your sig makes me more assured of your assholism. That stupid sig and your stupid message has been broadcasted over every single slashdot story about carnivore, or napster. Dickweed, leave us alone.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
What you do not seem to understand is that this is all a control issue.
As far as I know, the judge in this case is not a geek, and probably does not frequent slashdot.
He may be fooled by the MPAA's lawyers into thinking that this is all a technology issue, and make a wrong decision. The people who cracked the dvd encryption did so because they wanted a DVD player for linux, not just to anger the MPAA (which would probably serve no purpose anyway). By breaking the encryption, there is hope for a dvd player for linux, but if this is decided to be illegal, then the MPAA will hold the code as their copyright and there will never be a linux player. The mirrors, they won't matter. If the MPAA gets pissed and owns the copyright, they will never licence it to a company who will create a commercial linux player because they will be bitter over the linux fans who cracked it. Quite clearly, you don't care too much about your freedom of speech. When you have a right or freedom that you care about taken away, you should expect the same reaction as yours from others.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
I must give credit where it is needed, so this piece came out of the salon article Courtney love does the math. It does an excellent job of showing that we should be against the RIAA and record labels, not the artists, and not lars ulrich. Lars is worried about people stealing his music because he gets paid so little. This article made this very apparent to me.
... zero!
I want to start with a story about rock bands and record companies, and do some recording-contract math:
This story is about a bidding-war band that gets a huge deal with a 20 percent royalty rate and a million-dollar advance. (No bidding-war band ever got a 20 percent royalty, but whatever.) This is my "funny" math based on some reality and I just want to qualify it by saying I'm positive it's better math than what Edgar Bronfman Jr. [the president and CEO of Seagram, which owns Polygram] would provide.
What happens to that million dollars?
They spend half a million to record their album. That leaves the band with $500,000. They pay $100,000 to their manager for 20 percent commission. They pay $25,000 each to their lawyer and business manager.
That leaves $350,000 for the four band members to split. After $170,000 in taxes, there's $180,000 left. That comes out to $45,000 per person.
That's $45,000 to live on for a year until the record gets released.
The record is a big hit and sells a million copies. (How a bidding-war band sells a million copies of its debut record is another rant entirely, but it's based on any basic civics-class knowledge that any of us have about cartels. Put simply, the antitrust laws in this country are basically a joke, protecting us just enough to not have to re-name our park service the Phillip Morris National Park Service.)
So, this band releases two singles and makes two videos. The two videos cost a million dollars to make and 50 percent of the video production costs are recouped out of the band's royalties.
The band gets $200,000 in tour support, which is 100 percent recoupable.
The record company spends $300,000 on independent radio promotion. You have to pay independent promotion to get your song on the radio; independent promotion is a system where the record companies use middlemen so they can pretend not to know that radio stations -- the unified broadcast system -- are getting paid to play their records.
All of those independent promotion costs are charged to the band.
Since the original million-dollar advance is also recoupable, the band owes $2 million to the record company.
If all of the million records are sold at full price with no discounts or record clubs, the band earns $2 million in royalties, since their 20 percent royalty works out to $2 a record.
Two million dollars in royalties minus $2 million in recoupable expenses equals
How much does the record company make?
They grossed $11 million.
It costs $500,000 to manufacture the CDs and they advanced the band $1 million. Plus there were $1 million in video costs, $300,000 in radio promotion and $200,000 in tour support.
The company also paid $750,000 in music publishing royalties.
They spent $2.2 million on marketing. That's mostly retail advertising, but marketing also pays for those huge posters of Marilyn Manson in Times Square and the street scouts who drive around in vans handing out black Korn T-shirts and backwards baseball caps. Not to mention trips to Scores and cash for tips for all and sundry.
Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million.
So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
superrob, the people who will get hurt by doing the boycott will be the artists, not the RIAA. The artists can starve but god help us if one of those lawyers misses a car payment on his rolls.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
And who will get screwed in the end by everyone staying away from all RIAA endorsed music? The artists. The artists will lose money before the lawyers lose business. Everyone knows that.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
My god, man, why is noone thinking of the children? Like hansen? The poor, poor starving artists children?
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Getting rich from it? I beleive the lawyers working for and against the RIAA will be getting rich. As for the artists, who we really care about, not the music companies, they will be stuck paying more bills than ever to pay for these bastard lawyers.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
of the corporate idiots.
Contrary to what the man in the solid-gold ferrari (lars) would like you to beleive, artists aren't starving to death from the big bad napster. Limp bizkit has embraced napster, encouraged their fans (like me) to have napster and use napster and go ahead and trade limp MP3's on napster. Limp bizkit got free concert sponsorship by napster, limp got money, limps fans get a free concert, all groups get cash and publicity and are generally happy.
Lars, on the other hand, has rejected napster. He has made derogatory comments toward napster, he has alienated 330,000 of his fans, he got a lot of bad publicity, he loses money from the people who are sick of his actions and refuse to buy metallica CD's.
What all the artists and regular people saying the evils of napster seem to forget is that NAPSTER IS FOR AND BY PEOPLE WHO LOVE MUSIC!
Shawn fanning created it because he needed a better way to find MP3's. Software developers for napster created it because if they hated napster, they wouldn't be working for it. The people with napster are supporting it by having their collection available to everyone else on napster. The so-called "pirates" lars has spoken of don't exist. People who have (had) metallica songs on napster and were booted off weren't snickering while downloading songs and saying "haha look at lars we're stealing from him because we hate him and his band". The people downloading it did so because they liked metallica. If they didn't like metallica, they would have either deleted the songs or never downloaded them in the first place.
None of the people on there are on napster for the sole purpose of spiting, stealing from and angering artists. They are on napster because they enjoy listening to music. Napster users buy more music, as the independent study showed. Is this hurting the RIAA? That the people with this software are buying more music? If anything, more music being bought means more dough for music execs. If the RIAA endorsed napster, we wouldn't have 300,000 alienated fans, we wouldn't have the dumb puppet man, we wouldn't have this lawsuit and we would still have napster.
Why can't we all get along?
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Mac alternative? How about Macster!
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
...or music prices simply become more resonable.
BWA HA HA HA HA!
Music prices lower? The RIAA acting descent? Like that will ever happen. As for now, I'm getting gnutella.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it.
The people saying this is alright for the FBI to do clearly do not care about the removal of their privacy. When a right that such people care about is removed, they should expect similar reactions from other people.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net
Hey man, as much as I appreciate my right to privacy, the FBI can read all my mail too. Even if it is a carnivore, it still can't eat That much pink stuff without exploding. Better yet, since it is a carnivore, it should eat that newly imported flock of fresian sheep with a form of mad cow disease, go insane, and die.
Kris
botboy60@hotmail.com
Nerdnetwork.net