I'm no lawyer, but I have to believe that the underlying technology has to come to play here.
Gmail provides two APIs for managing mail in Gmail:
1) IMAP - clearly you can create, read, update, delete emails through IMAP. LimitNone would be silly to sue Google for creating an IMAP client for migration purposes.
2) The email migration API. In true Google fashion, this is a REST API that only supports one way posting of mail to Google. It is very single purpose.
gMove used neither of these. It instead, used non-supported, non-documented protocols that the navtive Gmail interface uses to talk to the server.
Sure, gMove may have been a clever implementation, but a robust product it was not. If they were charging customers for a product built on an ever changing, non-documented API, that's the risk they understood. Hell, their customers should be suing them for false advertising.
The band Syrius Jones went with a Creative Commons Sharing License in May and has since had the busiest summer of bookings in 3 years. True, we have definitely sold fewer CDs, but have more than made up the difference in revenue from the shows.
At best, a die-hard fan buys one CD every year for $10, yet a casual fan will go to show after show dropping $10 bucks for tickets every time. File-sharing == more fans == more revenue.
This has been my personal experience as well. Just to reinforce:
I've had the luxury of being a part of a band signed twice to a small labels. We made absolutely nothing, despite experiencing moderate success.
Since then, we've purposely avoided label interest so we can control our own music and merchandise (and destiny). We record everything ourselves and release all music under a creative commons license. So far, it's working well. We have broken even on our bar tabs, equipment, promotion, and gas... we never broke even under a label.
I don't buy a bit of this "RIAA helps musicians" crap.
1. It costs effectively nothing to record these days. Case in point: http://syriusjones.org/articles/2006/06/13/the-tru th-recording-music-is-basically-free 2. It costs nearly nothing to distribute digitally (insert long tail reference here) 3. Marketing costs money...but wait, we've all heard of Weird Al, so he doesn't need much marketing anymore.
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I'm no lawyer, but I have to believe that the underlying technology has to come to play here.
Gmail provides two APIs for managing mail in Gmail:
1) IMAP - clearly you can create, read, update, delete emails through IMAP. LimitNone would be silly to sue Google for creating an IMAP client for migration purposes.
2) The email migration API. In true Google fashion, this is a REST API that only supports one way posting of mail to Google. It is very single purpose.
gMove used neither of these. It instead, used non-supported, non-documented protocols that the navtive Gmail interface uses to talk to the server.
Sure, gMove may have been a clever implementation, but a robust product it was not. If they were charging customers for a product built on an ever changing, non-documented API, that's the risk they understood. Hell, their customers should be suing them for false advertising.
The band Syrius Jones went with a Creative Commons Sharing License in May and has since had the busiest summer of bookings in 3 years. True, we have definitely sold fewer CDs, but have more than made up the difference in revenue from the shows.
At best, a die-hard fan buys one CD every year for $10, yet a casual fan will go to show after show dropping $10 bucks for tickets every time. File-sharing == more fans == more revenue.
Just food for thought from the trenches.
This has been my personal experience as well. Just to reinforce:
I've had the luxury of being a part of a band signed twice to a small labels. We made absolutely nothing, despite experiencing moderate success.
Since then, we've purposely avoided label interest so we can control our own music and merchandise (and destiny). We record everything ourselves and release all music under a creative commons license. So far, it's working well.
We have broken even on our bar tabs, equipment, promotion, and gas... we never broke even under a label.
I don't buy a bit of this "RIAA helps musicians" crap.
http://syriusjones.org/ - Shameless plug - see and hear for yourself.
Why is Al even messing with this?
u th-recording-music-is-basically-free
1. It costs effectively nothing to record these days. Case in point: http://syriusjones.org/articles/2006/06/13/the-tr
2. It costs nearly nothing to distribute digitally (insert long tail reference here)
3. Marketing costs money...but wait, we've all heard of Weird Al, so he doesn't need much marketing anymore.
He should be doing this himself. Period.
UHF Rules!!!!