If it doesn't turn out that Juan Gutierrez works in Apple's PR department, he should. They have gotten all kinds of free publicity out of this and it didn't come out early enough to do any real damage.
About all they can really get out of this is an injunction... And more publicity...
If somebody ever pulls that on me, I would be inclined to ask them to agree to pay me for the duration of the agreement whether I worked for them or not...
Rather than try to block porn sites (which is basically an impossible task -- as many others have posted), just post a notice that "the terminals are in a publics place and shouldn't be used to look at things that would offend other patrons." If they fail to play by the rules, post thier name on a public list. You might also implement a fine system for anybody who draws complaints about what they are looking at.
I like this. We can start mailing files full of random numbers to government employees who cross us along with a clear text comment like "Use your XYZZY key, they'll never break this." Perhaps mailing to FBI managers randomly selected from the directory, too.
Don't throw away your Napster client. Find 5 unsigned, unheard of, bands who are promoting themselves with MP3s on the internet (like me -- http://www.PrimalSession.com/). Distribute them with your Napster client. Preface the titles with NOTRIAA so they can be easily found. When you look for music using Napster, search for NOTRIAA. You can't hurt the RIAA by ditching Napster. You can hurt them by being part of an alternative distribution system.
Don't know about Fugazi, but Ani DiFranco is selling well over 100,000 CDs a year and she owns the record company (http://www.anidifranco.net/history.html); so, she is definitely making a good bit of her income from CD sales. Very roughly, that would be be grossing at least $500,000 a year.
Touring only pays big bucks on weekends; so, she can probably do at most 100 dates a year (tops -- she more likely takes some time off while recording). Her currently posted 5 month schedule extraplates to 90 gigs a year. If she does weekday concerts at all, they probably pay about 1/5th of what a weekend concert does. I suspect the concert fees vary quite a bit, but probably run between $5,000 to $20,000 depending on size of venue (I would guess that Ani is the kind of person who would take care of people who supported her in the past; so, some of those concerts are probably done at lower rates for old supporters). At any rate, that would say that more income comes from concerts, but that both are very significant.
This is also born out by the fact that she has 8 people in the home office (who would probably be handling the label stuff) and 10 people in her touring crew (at least according to her web site).
1. Musicians that have been around long enough to sell more then 5000 albums receive a significant portion of thier income from CD sales (asuming they have avoided a major label). For a solo artist, even selling 1000 CDs can mean some income because the recording expenses can be much lower than for a band.
2. Most musicians lose money for 10 or more years before they break even. They have to support thier craft with day jobs (or wedding gigs, which amount to the same thing). If they are lucky, they get a label contract which is basically a short cut on that 10 year building process, but they don't get paid much until the contract runs out. If they do get a label contract, they probably don't get anything beyond the advance, but that is still a whole lot better than the support they would have gotten from MacDonald's....
Re:Horse Buggies, Inc. vs. Ford Motor Co.
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
Your numbers are way off on this. The labels get something between $7-9 for a $17 list CD. The store really sells it for a lot less than list and there is a distributor in the middle who grabs $1.50 to $2.00. Also, the labels pay for all the advertising, the stores do nothing but provide shelf space. In most cases, the stores don't even pay for the product up front. Major labels give them 90 days to pay (well over half the stock in a store turns over faster than that). Indie labels and unsigned musicians don't get paid until the records sell (if at all -- in my experience about half the stores we dealt with stiffed us).
I do think there is some waste at major labels (they definitely haven't caught on to the fact that you can record a first class album for $10-20K these days instead of $100K), but they aren't raking in money hand over fist the way you think they are. I can tell you from experience that making CDs is easy. Getting more than a few hundred people to even listen to them, let alone buy them, takes a lot of advertising.
The major labels really provide a quality control service which determines what music gets heard (rather badly, by most people's accounts). If the labels are destroyed by copying (not really all that likely) and something doesn't come around to replace that service, then we will all end up listening to crappy music. If somebody comes up with a better/cheaper way to promote new music, the labels will die because they no longer add value. If you don't think the major labels add value, why is virtually all of the music traded on Napster major label product?
By promoting new music, I mean connecting music with people who will like it, not cramming the music you happen to be selling down everybody's throat with a slick marketing campaign. It's a really difficult problem to solve.
Re:mp3.com's broken data collection not an excuse
on
Napster Wars
·
· Score: 1
1. They pay the artists out of the advertising revenue from thier site. They don't get advertising revenue from Napster.
2. They are immoral because they attempt to pay artists something instead of completing robbing them blind?
1. The music industry refuses to acknowledge mp3.com as a major player. [As in they won't seriously negotiate with mp3.com on the rights to distribute major label product.]
2. mp3.com is now a publicly traded company that has to figure out a way to start charging money for their services, but they have a huge customer base that expects "free".
The solution:
They build a service which is right on the hairy edge of being copyright infringement to intentionally provoke a lawsuit. The RIAA wins, but they know they will be on thin ice if there is an appeal; so, they cut deals (if one label has cut a deal, the others will follow to keep from being left out).
The result:
MP3.com has been admitted as a member of the club... AND they can blame the labels for the charges which they impose on the service (which they had to do sooner or later -- the comm bill for that my.mp3.com service has got to be substantial). From that standpoint, it was actually better for mp3.com to lose, than win.
You already have that right. Nobody argued that in the mymp3 case. What they argued was that MP3.com didn't have the right to make the original copies of the CDs that are in thier database. If they changed the service to require you to upload your copy first, the entire thing would be legal. That is undoubtedly why the labels are still negotiating with MP3.com.
Are there any web sites on the net that "out" spammers (provide real names and addresses)?
It would be nice if somebody did that. I'm sure a little "personal" feedback from random stangers would go a long way toward convincing one to give up the SPAM habbit:-)
I think somebody should put up the "barbievote.com" web site. It would be one page which posed the following question with counters for each of the answers:
What do you think the term "Barbie Doll" most likely refers to:
1. An air-headed good looking blonde.
2. A image designed to repress women.
3. A plastic doll.
Needless to say, it shouldn't accept more than one vote from the same IP address....
It would be really interesting to see what Mattel's lawyers would do with such a site (especially if it had been up long enough to collect a lot of votes:-).
That was not Barney Frank's take on it when we met with him last year (to complain about exactly this kind of thing) and he's one of the authors of the bill.
The whole Napster blow up proves exactly one thing: It proves how well the record labels big budget marketing programs work on all the supposed "free thinkers" who complain about this. If you really want to hurt the RIAA, kick Metallica and Madonna off Napster and download somebody else's music. As long as you keep throwing a tantrum about it, you are playing right into thier hands. Go to www.iuma.com. There are thousands of free downloads there and most of them are better than Metallica...
You can't really walk the streets in anonymity unless you are very good at disguises... If you do anything of note, people are going to remember what you looked like.
Slashdot Mirror
If it doesn't turn out that Juan Gutierrez works in Apple's PR department, he should. They have gotten all kinds of free publicity out of this and it didn't come out early enough to do any real damage.
About all they can really get out of this is an injunction... And more publicity...
Wouldn't help. The artical states that clear ADKs can also be replaced without detection.
And you think the existing USB drivers will work at 40 times the performance without hitting another round of bugs?
If somebody ever pulls that on me, I would be inclined to ask them to agree to pay me for the duration of the agreement whether I worked for them or not...
Check out the parody (http://www.gwbush.com/) of Bush's official site.
I especially liked Chap 7 of the "Unauthorized Bush (Sr.) Bio"
How did they get away with the ubiquitous gay Ken doll without being sued by Mattel?
Rather than try to block porn sites (which is basically an impossible task -- as many others have posted), just post a notice that "the terminals are in a publics place and shouldn't be used to look at things that would offend other patrons." If they fail to play by the rules, post thier name on a public list. You might also implement a fine system for anybody who draws complaints about what they are looking at.
Apple probably planted the info to get free publicity. Filing lawsuits against un-named individuals just turns up the the free PR meter...
I like this. We can start mailing files full of random numbers to government employees who cross us along with a clear text comment like "Use your XYZZY key, they'll never break this." Perhaps mailing to FBI managers randomly selected from the directory, too.
Don't throw away your Napster client. Find 5 unsigned, unheard of, bands who are promoting themselves with MP3s on the internet (like me -- http://www.PrimalSession.com/). Distribute them with your Napster client. Preface the titles with NOTRIAA so they can be easily found. When you look for music using Napster, search for NOTRIAA. You can't hurt the RIAA by ditching Napster. You can hurt them by being part of an alternative distribution system.
Just to get them really going, you could e-mail around files full of random numbers...
Don't know about Fugazi, but Ani DiFranco is selling well over 100,000 CDs a year and she owns the record company (http://www.anidifranco.net/history.html); so, she is definitely making a good bit of her income from CD sales. Very roughly, that would be be grossing at least $500,000 a year.
Touring only pays big bucks on weekends; so, she can probably do at most 100 dates a year (tops -- she more likely takes some time off while recording). Her currently posted 5 month schedule extraplates to 90 gigs a year. If she does weekday concerts at all, they probably pay about 1/5th of what a weekend concert does. I suspect the concert fees vary quite a bit, but probably run between $5,000 to $20,000 depending on size of venue (I would guess that Ani is the kind of person who would take care of people who supported her in the past; so, some of those concerts are probably done at lower rates for old supporters). At any rate, that would say that more income comes from concerts, but that both are very significant.
This is also born out by the fact that she has 8 people in the home office (who would probably be handling the label stuff) and 10 people in her touring crew (at least according to her web site).
Reality Check
1. Musicians that have been around long enough to sell more then 5000 albums receive a significant portion of thier income from CD sales (asuming they have avoided a major label). For a solo artist, even selling 1000 CDs can mean some income because the recording expenses can be much lower than for a band.
2. Most musicians lose money for 10 or more years before they break even. They have to support thier craft with day jobs (or wedding gigs, which amount to the same thing). If they are lucky, they get a label contract which is basically a short cut on that 10 year building process, but they don't get paid much until the contract runs out. If they do get a label contract, they probably don't get anything beyond the advance, but that is still a whole lot better than the support they would have gotten from MacDonald's....
Your numbers are way off on this. The labels get something between $7-9 for a $17 list CD. The store really sells it for a lot less than list and there is a distributor in the middle who grabs $1.50 to $2.00. Also, the labels pay for all the advertising, the stores do nothing but provide shelf space. In most cases, the stores don't even pay for the product up front. Major labels give them 90 days to pay (well over half the stock in a store turns over faster than that). Indie labels and unsigned musicians don't get paid until the records sell (if at all -- in my experience about half the stores we dealt with stiffed us).
I do think there is some waste at major labels (they definitely haven't caught on to the fact that you can record a first class album for $10-20K these days instead of $100K), but they aren't raking in money hand over fist the way you think they are. I can tell you from experience that making CDs is easy. Getting more than a few hundred people to even listen to them, let alone buy them, takes a lot of advertising.
The major labels really provide a quality control service which determines what music gets heard (rather badly, by most people's accounts). If the labels are destroyed by copying (not really all that likely) and something doesn't come around to replace that service, then we will all end up listening to crappy music. If somebody comes up with a better/cheaper way to promote new music, the labels will die because they no longer add value. If you don't think the major labels add value, why is virtually all of the music traded on Napster major label product?
By promoting new music, I mean connecting music with people who will like it, not cramming the music you happen to be selling down everybody's throat with a slick marketing campaign. It's a really difficult problem to solve.
1. They pay the artists out of the advertising revenue from thier site. They don't get advertising revenue from Napster.
2. They are immoral because they attempt to pay artists something instead of completing robbing them blind?
This was an absolutely brilliant move by mp3.com.
The problems:
1. The music industry refuses to acknowledge mp3.com as a major player. [As in they won't seriously negotiate with mp3.com on the rights to distribute major label product.]
2. mp3.com is now a publicly traded company that has to figure out a way to start charging money for their services, but they have a huge customer base that expects "free".
The solution:
They build a service which is right on the hairy edge of being copyright infringement to intentionally provoke a lawsuit. The RIAA wins, but they know they will be on thin ice if there is an appeal; so, they cut deals (if one label has cut a deal, the others will follow to keep from being left out).
The result:
MP3.com has been admitted as a member of the club... AND they can blame the labels for the charges which they impose on the service (which they had to do sooner or later -- the comm bill for that my.mp3.com service has got to be substantial). From that standpoint, it was actually better for mp3.com to lose, than win.
You already have that right. Nobody argued that in the mymp3 case. What they argued was that MP3.com didn't have the right to make the original copies of the CDs that are in thier database. If they changed the service to require you to upload your copy first, the entire thing would be legal. That is undoubtedly why the labels are still negotiating with MP3.com.
The SPAM samples are real. I have many of them in my archives (I archive all SPAM I receive so it can be used as evidence).
Are there any web sites on the net that "out" spammers (provide real names and addresses)?
:-)
It would be nice if somebody did that. I'm sure a little "personal" feedback from random stangers would go a long way toward convincing one to give up the SPAM habbit
I think somebody should put up the "barbievote.com" web site. It would be one page which posed the following question with counters for each of the answers:
:-).
What do you think the term "Barbie Doll" most likely refers to:
1. An air-headed good looking blonde.
2. A image designed to repress women.
3. A plastic doll.
Needless to say, it shouldn't accept more than one vote from the same IP address....
It would be really interesting to see what Mattel's lawyers would do with such a site (especially if it had been up long enough to collect a lot of votes
That was not Barney Frank's take on it when we met with him last year (to complain about exactly this kind of thing) and he's one of the authors of the bill.
And what if the virus crashes a hospital computer system?
The whole Napster blow up proves exactly one thing: It proves how well the record labels big budget marketing programs work on all the supposed "free thinkers" who complain about this. If you really want to hurt the RIAA, kick Metallica and Madonna off Napster and download somebody else's music. As long as you keep throwing a tantrum about it, you are playing right into thier hands. Go to www.iuma.com. There are thousands of free downloads there and most of them are better than Metallica...
1. Ether way it is theft of intellectual property.
2. It can't be slander if they don't identify who did it...
You can't really walk the streets in anonymity unless you are very good at disguises... If you do anything of note, people are going to remember what you looked like.