Movie pirating cost the industry $18.2 billion worldwide in 2005, the last year for which figures were available, according to the Motion Picture Association of America. Moviegoers are increasingly carrying cellphones, digital cameras and other devices capable of recording.
Total bullshit. Pirating didn't cost the movie industry anywhere near 18.2 billion dollars, and anyone who believes those absurd numbers is a fool or a congressman.
In reality, it's coming from a much thinner slice of everyone's entertainment dollar, extrapolated over some imaginary numbers to get a huge number that makes people scared. Follow up with a few million dollars thrown around to the right congressmen (shockingly less than $300k per lawmaker that gets a bribe, er campaign contribution), and you suddenly have legitimacy for a very fake number.
Movie receipts are up. Theaters are doing better than ever these days, primarily thanks to something we never saw at a theater before... 10+ minutes worth of real commercials before the show. Remember when you went to a movie and the screen was blank for 20 minutes, then the trailers happened and then the movie? Hah! Now, you get some form of 20 minutes of semi-entertainment features ("the 20" or "screenvision" or whatever your brand has) which is saturated with advertisements. Then the commercials before the trailers, which at worst used to be an advertisement for the concession stand, now it's a cellphone ad, a mountain dew ad, a car ad and who knows what else, the same as you'd see on television. Pure profit for the theater owners with a captive audience that they can measure almost exactly.
Did the price of a movie ticket go down? Absolutely not, I'm sure it's been steadily climbing in very tiny increments (.25 here,.50 there) and so do the concession prices. We all know that your average carbonated beverage costs at most $.25 per liter, yet in the magical boundaries of a movie theater a large beverage (free refills!) will run you $4+. Popcorn? $4 for even a small bag of popcorn that won't even last through the previews.
So, the price of entertainment keeps going up. We don't devote all of our free resources to the same source of entertainment, especially when the quality of the product isn't necessarily consistent.
If a guy has $100/mo he can devote to entertainment 5 years ago, lets assume that he gets a %5 raise every year, and can still devote the same portion of money to entertainment today. Guy has a whole $25 extra per month to spend on things. (this is assuming that at some point Guy didn't decide to buy a house, a new car, start a family, move across the country or discover a new hobby of course and we're assuming that Guy is still quite boring and does the same things today as he did 5 years ago). 5 Years ago, a movie might have cost $6-7, now it's $10-11. A CD was $12-15, now it's $16-17. DVD movies, $15 before, now $20. Even video games that were previously $40-50, are now $50-60. All of the things you spend your entertainment dollar on, are increasing their prices much higher and faster than the rate of advancement for most people's income. So what happens? People stop buying as much of some things. Less video games, less movies, less music, etc.
Unfortunately, the reaction to their own price increases and lowered value is to blame piracy.
"Ninety percent of recently released films that are pirated are done by camcording in movie theaters," said Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America. "It's happening all over.
Okay, so it's happening. We've got it. We saw it on Seinfeld 10 years ago, and it was clever then, now it's not. But is it doing anything? Are the kind of people who download a crap looking handheld camera recording of a movie really the kind of person who's actually going to pay $10 to see the movie at the theater? I've never met the person who's said that they'd rather sit at home and watch a grain
Sony? The rootkit installing, graffiti sponsoring over priced pusher of mediocre quality products?
Microsoft? Of course not, we're on slashdot after all...
the US Department of Justice? After the media coverage of the Paris Hilton ordeal and the fact that millions of people now realize that convicted people in most cases only serve %10 of their time and even less if they're rich socialites... followed by the abrupt reversal of the status quo to put the rich socialite in jail to the fullest extent of her sentence rather than getting treated like any other common probation violator... I'd say the average American is rather unsure of where they stand with regards to the justice system in the US and I'd suspect that money would have a lot to do with it today in any case.
they're all pretty shady in their own respects if you ask me, and it all seems to come down to money.
So, anyone have any recommendations (or expectations?) for residential fiber in San Francisco?
I'm not going to stick with Speakeasy any longer as soon as fiber is available now. I was always willing to keep with the little guy and all that... but now that the little guy funnels money to the Big Guy, i can't really claim any sort of advantage in doing it. I'll support whatever Big Guy will offer me a bit fatty fiber to the home style pipe.
I'm in San Francisco, surely this kind of thing is freakin possible. Anyone know anything at all?
buying a CD doesn't buy you the right to anything, only the ability. Technically the only right you buy with a CD, is your personal ability to listen to the CD. If they could make it illegal to rip it to mp3's, they definitely would. (not that they could actually stop you, but the record companies would much rather you buy the same thing multiple times for multiple uses.)
It's still illegal to do illegal things with a CD, you just have an easier time doing it than the people who buy DRM'ed files.
Just because a law exists with a definition, does not make it correct.
If Congress passes a law tomorrow that defines the internet as a series of tubes, solely because the Congress is made up primarily of technologically ignorant people, and the bill contains enough pet projects, pork and other personal/special interests to actually pass both bodies of legislature, does that suddenly make it true?
I'm sorry, but our Government is not necessarily looking out for anything except the lobbyists and whatever their definitions and qualifications for protecting themselves happens to be. If you can call something an understandable term enough that people who don't understand fundamental differences can object to, it has the potential to be a law. It doesn't have to also be correct at the same time, since the Government is made up primarily of old people who are scared of computers.
The average age of a Senator is 60. The average House member, 55.
Think of your parents or grandparents. Think of their understanding of IP laws, computers in general, copyright and anything else that we have very poor definitions for based on 19th century concepts that have been drastically outdated by modern technology. Are these the people you trust to tell you both what things are legally defined as, and to set the laws governing them?
I sure hope not. Unfortunately that's what we're stuck with.
It's not shocking that companies are doing this. It's very very intentional, as are the apologies and reluctant refunds. They know what they're doing, and it's a very good tactic to get every last drop of dirty money from unhappy customers.
Most people are lazy. They'll just say "oh well at least they won't bill me again" when they see a parting shot from something they cancelled. It's only $15, and my time is valuable i'm not going to sit on hold and talk to someone who doesn't speak english just for $15 right? So the company makes it as much of a hassle as they can, in order to keep an extra $15 here and there. I imagine if you tried 200 companies, at least %75 of them have a policy in place to do the exact same thing. They also have a policy to own up and apologize for it whenever they're caught, by explaining that it was a one-time thing and they're very very sorry and it won't happen again. AOL did it to me several times (it's like I'd have learned my lesson once, but noooooo. Never use AOL as temporary internet access while you're out of town. Free trials are rarely free).
The first place I heard of shady deals like this, of course, were the porn sites. You sign up for 30-days, but of course you're on a recurring billing immediately. If you're not careful, you're also sometimes agreeing to a multi-site pass that costs a lot more than you initially imagined! The porn sites are banking on the idea that you're not going to call visa and ask them to cancel a charge from a porn site at worst, and that you won't even notice the charge at best. If you find out, no problem they won't bill you again (but they won't refund you!). They still get 2 months of money from a one-month sub. It's genius, and it's no wonder "legit" companies have adopted porno site practices.
Bush's mistake is still going and has taken thousands of American lives with no end in sight, countless numbers of Iraqi lives, and billions of dollars. What's the current cost, 1-2 billion a day? Is it really worth it? Didn't less people die in the unfortunate 9/11 incidents than have did in Iraq so far? Is this an appropriate response? Are we actually "winning" any war on terrorism by military destabilization, rather than education and assisting these people? I'd like to think that 300-400 billion dollars in aid every year could produce one hell of a better civilization for a 3rd world nation, rather than killing people and blowing things up, but that's just me.
When you're going to bomb a building, you should make sure you have the right intel. I'm not %100 sure but I think the building was bombed when there weren't many people inside (or a minimal amount) so the casualties weren't large. It's an appropriate response to a bad intel, which until the thing was actually bombed enough people thought it was a legitimate threat. (and honestly, there's no proof it wasn't making chemicals that could produce nerve agents, and there was still a very good chance it was supply the bin Laden group with money, which makes it a decent target anyway if you're actually fighting a "war on terror")
When you invade a country, depose their leader, destabilize the entire region, torture citizens and attempt to convert an entire nation to your form of government and social expectations in a small amount of time, I think you need to be absolutely sure of what you're doing and absolutely have your facts straight. It's a much larger idea. If Bush had decided to bomb all of the sites in Iraq that may or may not have had "WMD's", and just left things alone, I believe that the entire world would have supported his decision, even if a few of them were inaccurate. (they can probably dig up enough circumstantial evidence to attempt to prove that there was something sinister going on at a few sites, but perhaps not all). Instead, Bush went the extra mile of righteousness, and invaded the entire country under a very weak pretext. I don't care how Republican or Democrat you are, this should be a Very Bad Thing. Especially now that we know there was very little to no threat from Iraq in the near future.
This should not be about any ignorant partisan politics. People are currently dying, there's no end in sight, and people want to turn things into a "blowjobs vs. bombs" debate.
What a wonderful country. I've never felt more ashamed to be American.
Apple found another reason for people to spend more money on an Apple media player, than any other brand's media player. Itunes content can only be played on an ipod, therefore Apple doesn't care about making a few pennies here or there at the itunes music store, they care greatly about having you buy a brand new video playing ipod, where they make at least $100 pure profit (maybe more, depending on the model) per unit sold, not to mention the vast amounts of profits on accessories and licensing the accessories. For a company that's going to release a home entertainment PC that will presumably be able to download movies from the itunes store and play them back on your PC, a Disney catalog represents millions and millions of dollars in sales on the new box. You can't target small children with the ipod as-is for the most part, but every parent knows "stick in a disney movie, get an hour and a half of peace". Money in the bank. Disney wins, Apple sells a lot of their new hardware next year without any effort at all because it's supported by a huge catalog of Things People Already Like.
okay, you're a little confused about how the music industry actually works, works for itself, and doesn't represent the rights and best interest of the musicians they "sign". (or indenture, depending on how you like to look at it).
Typical Major Label:
1. The label signs the artist. to a contract that allows the record label to own forever, the music that the artists create, giving the label all rights to income from the artists, forever. This means that someone who writes a song doesn't actually get credit for the song except for very small royalties. This is why Michael Jackson owns most of The Beatles works and profits from anyone buying older Beatles CD's today. They may in some cases give them a small chunk of good money up front. Unfortunately, this is almost always counted against future profits.
2. The label pays for expensive studio time. And then bills the artists against future royalties, ensuring that the label doesn't have to pay for a crappy album.
3. The rep from the label contacts the program directors at radio stations to get airplay. Sending your demo tape to a station will not get you on the air...reps who offer tickets at concerts and coop opportunities for bigger artists get airplay (because payola is technically illegal). This is why mainstream radio sounds exactly the same, and why plenty of good bands get absolutely no airplay. This is ruining music.
4. The label pays for CD duplication, printing, distribution. and again, bills the artist for this against future royalties. Thanks.
5. The label sends your CD to the music outlets. technically the music outlets purchase the CD's from the labels. They're not getting them for free. They're not even getting them at very good prices honestly, but that's all you get. Of course big high volume chains get a better price than small independent stores, but that's business. This is also ruining music, music stores, and the ability to find good music anywhere that isn't being stroked by the record labels to do it.
6. The label arranges concerts, merchandising, etc to make you rich (because we all know artists make nearly nothing on the music itself). And again, the label bills the band against profits for all the expenses they incur on a tour if they're the ones sponsoring it. That's why you get all the tours sponsored by Best Buy, Budweiser and any other promotional agency. The label takes in the $$ from promotion, bills the artists for the costs (and doesn't necessarily use the promotional windfalls to offset the touring expenses!) and takes their profit that way. Sometimes, depending on how much of their rights the band signed over to the label in the first place, the band has to give the labels a cut of concert profit, a cut of merch, and their share becomes an even smaller slice of the pie.
Can you imagine working for 2 years and being in more debt than when you started? This is what happens to most bands that sign a major label deal, but never end up being astoundingly popular and successful. When you've got 5 guys in a band, you'll be VERY lucky to turn an actual profit on a major label deal without selling 3+ million copies of an album and leading a very successful sold-out tour of mid-size venues. Clubs and small venues aren't going to cut it. This is also why moderately successful bands tour incessantly for 2+ years on one album. They're hugely in debt, and the labels usually have the least control over concert revenues (since often times concerts can and do lose lots of money and the record labels haven't figured out a way for a band to take the blame on that one if they try to profit off it at the same time). This is also why a band can have a slightly popular album, or a one-hit-wonder quality song, sell a million copies of an album (yay!) and never be heard from ever again. Their backs are against a wall, the record label owns everything they've created, and they're also in debt $100k to SonyBMG because S
This is an ignorant story by someone who doesn't even have any idea about the concert industry and the REAL problem, which is rampant scalping where %25-%50 of a venue is "pre-allocated" to scalping agencies and other people that have inside connections with Ticketmaster, the venue, or at worst hire a lot of people to stand in ticketmaster lines to get the best seats, only to re-sell them for at least triple face value.
Some creative and potentially smart but misguided tour management team got the idea a few years ago for Rolling Stones concerts, to charge scalper-level prices for all the tickets, in the same patterns that scalpers actually charge. Front row? $700+. 2nd - 5th rows? $500+, everything else that's in a "good" seat, double the crappy seats. Why let the scalpers make all the money (which in some cases could be up to half of the money that the band/tour actually hauls in) when you can just jack up your prices to "market level" and sell the venue accordingly?
It's a good plan from a financial sense, since all of the artists to adopt this plan (springsteen, stones, madonna to name a few) are on the top grossing artists list. They can sell less tickets, make more money, and when they do sell out, make a ton of money over what they would with normal flat-rate section based pricing. The bands with expensive concerts aren't hurting for money, they're only capitalizing on what they can make money on with almost no effort. People are somehow willing to pay outrageous amounts of money for prime seating at concerts, why let that money go to scalpers rather than the band?
Of course, it's unfortunate that this is their solution to scalping problems and other people getting rich off their efforts. Scalping is far too profitable for the venues and ticketmaster to want to stop, since they suck up a good chunk of inventory at a potentially undersold show and make even mediocre shows look more popular than they actually are. Artists need to step up and do something about it in a tangible way that doesn't directly affect the real music fans. Even fanclubs and special internet pre-sales are infested with scalpers, and the only way to get rid of them so far, has been to jack the prices up so high that they can't make a lot of profit off the tickets they can get. It's one thing to spend $1000 on 20 tickets you can flip for $5000 if you do well, and you can eat half the tickets if they don't sell since you're up 1500 if you sell half. It's another thing to spend $1000 on 2 tickets that you may not even be able to flip for $1500 since they're expensive already, and that deters scalpers at least slightly. (not entirely, you can find plenty of Madonna scalpers on your local craigslist I'm sure).
If anyone else has ideas on reducing the amount of scalpers out there, in a way that can get the maximum amount of tickets into the hands of real fans at face value, I'm sure you can make a lot of money.
Simultaneously, when the 2008 (or 2009 now maybe) deadline hits.
The FCC I believe has already auctioned or allocated the bandwith being used by television stations for other industries, so they've got a high interest in making things happen like they should have happened a long time ago. This has been going on for the last 10 years, and anyone who doesn't know about it more or less just doesn't care enough about TV to probably care when their reception goes away. You can buy a digital antenna, and be just fine. Of course, you'll get the improved reception and clarity as a bonus, but if you're using a normal antenna right now... chances are you're not really too concerned about that, are you?
You don't count cards in poker. (well, you do, but everyone can see the cards at all times that are countable, and the deck is shuffled after every hand, so it's more like simple odds calculation and not "counting cards" like you saw in a movie somewhere)
That's nice isn't it? An advertisement for a new years party in Charlotte, NC where there's a severe report of a fire.
I'm not sure that's a party I want to be going to if they're already reporting a fire and it's a couple of weeks away. Sounds like someone has something planned...
The artists already give a cut to someone, and it's called the promoter. Currently, the big boy in the business is Clear Channel. http://cc.com/
Currently, the way it works is that you have to schedule tours through Clear Channel for the most part. There are some local organizations who will properly get promotion and venue arrangements in place, but even then they have to usually give a cut to Clear Channel for the rights to promote someone. Anyone who's worked in a campus concert promtion board knows that you mostly have to pay off Clear Channel before an artist will schedule a date on their tour in your city. For big artists Clear Channel may get $100k up front, smaller ones maybe as little as a few thousand, but they get paid before a single ticket is sold. The venue then takes their cut of the gate, extracts the costs from the leftover and then gives the rest to the artist, and in some cases a cut of that goes to Clear Channel again, depending on how it was negotiated. Merchandise is usually only split with the venue, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some of it go to Clear Channel also.
There used to be a rate card published for clear channel's upfront fees for an artist, but I can't find it anymore and it may not have been a public site. It is very interesting to see how much it would cost a venue promoter to book an artist, as some of them make quite a lot of money just for showing up.
If anything, I'd see Clear Channel getting pissed before the artists, because at the very least this would give artists an option of who to let them promote their tour in the future. Clear Channel or their record label directly, either way the artist is going to drop at least %20 of whatever the gate is, so you can deal with the devil you know, or....
maybe you missed the bit in Star Wars with Luke swatting at a childs toy in the Falcon while en route to Alderaan?
maybe you missed the bit where Luke was running around a swamp for -months- with Yoda to train?
You don't start off as a bad-ass, and to think you're going to jump into a game and be super hero Juke Skyjumper Junior is silly.
All the complaints I see, are "I'm not super bad-ass and I can't go kill everything and destroy the empire the first day I play the game and that sucks so the games sucks LOL".
It's not an RPG, if you don't start off as nothing and develop your abilities until they're a fully developed whatever you're going for. If you want instant equality, play Quake or Jedi Knight 2 if you must. That's probably what you're looking for instead.
Perhaps this article (and many similar ones written this week) should be read first before taking the first article with a grain of "downloading is bad" salt.
http://www.antimusic.com/news/03/april/item19.sh tm l
The way the indie promotion business works is record labels pay the indie promoters to work directly with radio stations to get songs on the air. It is estimated that this system can cost over a $1 million to land a song on Top 40 radio.
A million dollars a song? No, there's no way you can lose money doing THAT with homogenized bland "sounds like" radio, is there?
An open note to record companies: Downloading is not hurting you as much as you're hurting yourself (and your audience indirectly) with the payola and other fat inside the company.
Want to make money again? Stop paying for radio to sound homogenic. Stop paying everyone and their grandmother bribes to tell people that the music you paid too much to record (michael jackson's invincible is a good one) doesn't suck and it's worth getting 40 spins a day on the top 100 stations in the US. Make programming directors at radio stations do their job and discover new music again, and break the stuff that needs to be broken, and let the copycat mainstream music stay on MTV, where they're content to just use what they're paid to play.
Give Radio back to the people, and you'll see that people want your music again, and it won't always be just the stuff you force feed them. If the same 25 songs weren't put on a loop with commercials on most radio stations, you'd see more than the same 25 albums being sold, and you'd likely not need to pay a million bucks a song (and with the typical 5 single album, that's 5 mil in useless waste, multiplied by perhaps 100 albums a year, that's half a billion dollars in useless waste, isn't it?).
Amazing where you can find profits these days, isn't it?
Nobody uses the built in preamp on a DAT deck, and the $500 in question would be for a used Sony TCD-D100, which in most people's consideration is not crap.
And binaural is a real word, look it up. If you recorded anything in concert, you'd understand it already, and I don't feel that responding to it is worth my time.
personally, I'd rather have a fully-digital device that can do 44.1/48 (which this can) and not have to deal with Minidisc, DAT's or anything at all that you have to transfer in real-time.
The potential is there though with this device, to work very well into the future as media gets cheaper and prices go down. 5 years ago, would you have assumed you could get a DVD-R for $2? 512MB of RAM for $50? 200gb of hard drive space for $150?
Of course not, with your thinking.
It's a shame so many people think that what exists now is the only thing that matters, and when someone shows you something that will likely be great a long time from now and is built with the expectation of advancement in technology, you say "bah, what is good now will always be good and who needs progress".
You can't smuggle in a DAT, get caught with it, and fake anything. You're toast.
Take an Ipaq into a concert and nobody will flip you more than a glance. You can even say you're writing down the setlist during the show. There's nothing worse than the dead giveaway of the blue backlight of a DAT recorder at a concert while you check your audio levels. If you know what you're looking for, you can always spot who's taping from the balcony. The only reason more people don't get busted, is because venue securities don't usually care, and band security is typically worried about the band during the show and has to assume that venue security catches tapers at the door, which they don't usually.
And most people don't really consider the preamp to be part of the "recording" solution, as it's mostly for the mics. People have different tastes in preamps and they're really more dependant on the mics than the recorder, so having a built in A/D converter would only limit the audience. Generally, if you record stuff, you don't use the mic-in on a DAT, you run it through a preamp first anyway, so this isn't exactly new ground.
I've never been caught, but I've always wondered what the hell to say to any security if they caught me. "Uh, it's my DAT Walkman, I jog with it, really". or "It's just a minidisc, no I forgot my headphones" or whatever.
PDA? Just show 'em some DopeWars or stocks, assuming they even ask, which I really doubt they'd bother since everyone knows those people who carry their PDA with them everywhere on their belt with their cellphone.
This takes half the problem away from stealthing at a show, definitely. I can't wait.
recording quality depends on your microphone kiddo, not your recording device.
And professional grade recording costs less than $2000, if you know how to shop and what to buy. We're talking field recording, which for the price of a DAT ($500) and a good set of microphones ($1000 will get a great pair of binaural mics, excellent for recording a concert) will get you going just fine.
I assume your "professional" runs the same as the people who pay for Monster Cable and assume that because it costs more, it has to be better.
unless you're stuck in a massive metro area where it's unprofitable to replace and/or add fiber lines in the entire city.
We had this in another town in Kentucky (Murray, which is probably on par with Glasgow) and were the 2nd town in the US (Canada being one large rural area seemed to have a lot more broadband at the time) back in late 1996, early 1997.
The only notable thing, is that as this sort of thing gets widespread, cable companies will have to either add more value to the service (free PPV perhaps, or more digital channels) or price it cheaper. Competition is a wonderful thing. I paid $25/month for a cablemodem capable of 512k down/256k up in a city that had competing cable tv, internet and even local/longdistance telephone service. The existing cable company (Charter) had to drastically reduce prices, hurry out their digital tier services, and price them competitively, as in the course of a summer the Electric Company had started offering a cable package with 10 more channels than the Cable Company, for around 12 bucks a month, compared to the cable company's 25. They're still fighting and the person who will end up winning, is the consumer.
My cable bill in Kentucky was 55/month. This included digital cable and a cable modem. Now I move to a large city, and I'm paying 50/month just for DSL, cable was just as expensive, and I can't afford the digital cable at all, as that's another 50/month. Things were much different in a small town with two providers, and they're doing very well, and I have hope that the idea will catch on everywhere else eventually and the cable monopoly will get bumped aside in favor of fair prices and better service.
Wow, what a concept, the internet should be marketed TO and not AGAINST.
Revolutionary concept, yeah?
2 years too late Hillary. Shutting down napster was supposed to save the recording industry and stop music sharing right? Oops. We can only hope that the next person in charge happens to realize how to do more than load up a webpage and can understand that there are actually consumers using the internet, not "thieves".
You know, being a fan of the artists I don't understand this philosophy.
Currently I trade shows for a lot of artists, some taper-friendly, some quite unfriendly. I would DIE if a certain someone would start selling soundboard patches of her shows. If I were a huge fan of Phish, I'd LOVE It if I could get non-audienced recordings. They're going to sound better than what 9/10 tapers can accomplish with a good dat and mics in the crowd, even with a stand.
I've got a lot of Dave Matthews Band shows, both downloaded and every one of their live albums they've released. I would *love* to see a soundboard copy of their Nashville show I actually went to last year, and I'd pay 13 bucks for it easily. I'd probably pay a lot more for it if they asked, because primarily it'd be a board. Yeah, I've got 3 different recordings from the audience of the show, and while they're good, probably great for audience recordings, they're still... audience recordings.
I think you're more into the "taping and trading" than the band however, and you just want to "Pokemon" the artist and collect all their shows without much regard to the music.
They're not stopping that. They're just selling a better quality product for the people who want it. Obviously if you've been fine with audience recordings for the last 10 years, you'll be fine with them for a long time coming, especially with the proliferation of the 96k/24bit things going on now, and increasingly better mic quality. Phish is just offering a choice, which really isn't that what their music was in the first place? A choice of something different rather than the same old mainstream crap? They're not saying you can't trade, or tape. They're just saying you can't trade or tape their soundboards, which last I checked you couldn't do _anyway_. They've actually done one better IMO, and loosened their trading policy and said it's cool to keep trading the AUD's of the officially released things (since everything now will be) which means that nobody will have to buy anything.
It's just a nice thing to do, for the people who would prefer it.
Slashdot Mirror
Total bullshit. Pirating didn't cost the movie industry anywhere near 18.2 billion dollars, and anyone who believes those absurd numbers is a fool or a congressman.
In reality, it's coming from a much thinner slice of everyone's entertainment dollar, extrapolated over some imaginary numbers to get a huge number that makes people scared. Follow up with a few million dollars thrown around to the right congressmen (shockingly less than $300k per lawmaker that gets a bribe, er campaign contribution), and you suddenly have legitimacy for a very fake number.
Movie receipts are up. Theaters are doing better than ever these days, primarily thanks to something we never saw at a theater before... 10+ minutes worth of real commercials before the show. Remember when you went to a movie and the screen was blank for 20 minutes, then the trailers happened and then the movie? Hah! Now, you get some form of 20 minutes of semi-entertainment features ("the 20" or "screenvision" or whatever your brand has) which is saturated with advertisements. Then the commercials before the trailers, which at worst used to be an advertisement for the concession stand, now it's a cellphone ad, a mountain dew ad, a car ad and who knows what else, the same as you'd see on television. Pure profit for the theater owners with a captive audience that they can measure almost exactly.
Did the price of a movie ticket go down? Absolutely not, I'm sure it's been steadily climbing in very tiny increments (.25 here, .50 there) and so do the concession prices. We all know that your average carbonated beverage costs at most $.25 per liter, yet in the magical boundaries of a movie theater a large beverage (free refills!) will run you $4+. Popcorn? $4 for even a small bag of popcorn that won't even last through the previews.
So, the price of entertainment keeps going up. We don't devote all of our free resources to the same source of entertainment, especially when the quality of the product isn't necessarily consistent.
If a guy has $100/mo he can devote to entertainment 5 years ago, lets assume that he gets a %5 raise every year, and can still devote the same portion of money to entertainment today. Guy has a whole $25 extra per month to spend on things. (this is assuming that at some point Guy didn't decide to buy a house, a new car, start a family, move across the country or discover a new hobby of course and we're assuming that Guy is still quite boring and does the same things today as he did 5 years ago). 5 Years ago, a movie might have cost $6-7, now it's $10-11. A CD was $12-15, now it's $16-17. DVD movies, $15 before, now $20. Even video games that were previously $40-50, are now $50-60. All of the things you spend your entertainment dollar on, are increasing their prices much higher and faster than the rate of advancement for most people's income. So what happens? People stop buying as much of some things. Less video games, less movies, less music, etc.
Unfortunately, the reaction to their own price increases and lowered value is to blame piracy.
"Ninety percent of recently released films that are pirated are done by camcording in movie theaters," said Kori Bernards, a spokeswoman for the Motion Picture Association of America. "It's happening all over.
Okay, so it's happening. We've got it. We saw it on Seinfeld 10 years ago, and it was clever then, now it's not. But is it doing anything? Are the kind of people who download a crap looking handheld camera recording of a movie really the kind of person who's actually going to pay $10 to see the movie at the theater? I've never met the person who's said that they'd rather sit at home and watch a grain
wait, who's in positive regard?
Sony? The rootkit installing, graffiti sponsoring over priced pusher of mediocre quality products?
Microsoft? Of course not, we're on slashdot after all...
the US Department of Justice? After the media coverage of the Paris Hilton ordeal and the fact that millions of people now realize that convicted people in most cases only serve %10 of their time and even less if they're rich socialites... followed by the abrupt reversal of the status quo to put the rich socialite in jail to the fullest extent of her sentence rather than getting treated like any other common probation violator... I'd say the average American is rather unsure of where they stand with regards to the justice system in the US and I'd suspect that money would have a lot to do with it today in any case.
they're all pretty shady in their own respects if you ask me, and it all seems to come down to money.
So, anyone have any recommendations (or expectations?) for residential fiber in San Francisco?
I'm not going to stick with Speakeasy any longer as soon as fiber is available now. I was always willing to keep with the little guy and all that... but now that the little guy funnels money to the Big Guy, i can't really claim any sort of advantage in doing it. I'll support whatever Big Guy will offer me a bit fatty fiber to the home style pipe.
I'm in San Francisco, surely this kind of thing is freakin possible. Anyone know anything at all?
buying a CD doesn't buy you the right to anything, only the ability. Technically the only right you buy with a CD, is your personal ability to listen to the CD. If they could make it illegal to rip it to mp3's, they definitely would. (not that they could actually stop you, but the record companies would much rather you buy the same thing multiple times for multiple uses.)
It's still illegal to do illegal things with a CD, you just have an easier time doing it than the people who buy DRM'ed files.
Just because a law exists with a definition, does not make it correct.
If Congress passes a law tomorrow that defines the internet as a series of tubes, solely because the Congress is made up primarily of technologically ignorant people, and the bill contains enough pet projects, pork and other personal/special interests to actually pass both bodies of legislature, does that suddenly make it true?
I'm sorry, but our Government is not necessarily looking out for anything except the lobbyists and whatever their definitions and qualifications for protecting themselves happens to be. If you can call something an understandable term enough that people who don't understand fundamental differences can object to, it has the potential to be a law. It doesn't have to also be correct at the same time, since the Government is made up primarily of old people who are scared of computers.
The average age of a Senator is 60. The average House member, 55.
Think of your parents or grandparents. Think of their understanding of IP laws, computers in general, copyright and anything else that we have very poor definitions for based on 19th century concepts that have been drastically outdated by modern technology. Are these the people you trust to tell you both what things are legally defined as, and to set the laws governing them?
I sure hope not. Unfortunately that's what we're stuck with.
It's not shocking that companies are doing this. It's very very intentional, as are the apologies and reluctant refunds. They know what they're doing, and it's a very good tactic to get every last drop of dirty money from unhappy customers.
Most people are lazy. They'll just say "oh well at least they won't bill me again" when they see a parting shot from something they cancelled. It's only $15, and my time is valuable i'm not going to sit on hold and talk to someone who doesn't speak english just for $15 right? So the company makes it as much of a hassle as they can, in order to keep an extra $15 here and there. I imagine if you tried 200 companies, at least %75 of them have a policy in place to do the exact same thing. They also have a policy to own up and apologize for it whenever they're caught, by explaining that it was a one-time thing and they're very very sorry and it won't happen again. AOL did it to me several times (it's like I'd have learned my lesson once, but noooooo. Never use AOL as temporary internet access while you're out of town. Free trials are rarely free).
The first place I heard of shady deals like this, of course, were the porn sites. You sign up for 30-days, but of course you're on a recurring billing immediately. If you're not careful, you're also sometimes agreeing to a multi-site pass that costs a lot more than you initially imagined! The porn sites are banking on the idea that you're not going to call visa and ask them to cancel a charge from a porn site at worst, and that you won't even notice the charge at best. If you find out, no problem they won't bill you again (but they won't refund you!). They still get 2 months of money from a one-month sub. It's genius, and it's no wonder "legit" companies have adopted porno site practices.
Bush's mistake is still going and has taken thousands of American lives with no end in sight, countless numbers of Iraqi lives, and billions of dollars. What's the current cost, 1-2 billion a day? Is it really worth it? Didn't less people die in the unfortunate 9/11 incidents than have did in Iraq so far? Is this an appropriate response? Are we actually "winning" any war on terrorism by military destabilization, rather than education and assisting these people? I'd like to think that 300-400 billion dollars in aid every year could produce one hell of a better civilization for a 3rd world nation, rather than killing people and blowing things up, but that's just me.
When you're going to bomb a building, you should make sure you have the right intel. I'm not %100 sure but I think the building was bombed when there weren't many people inside (or a minimal amount) so the casualties weren't large. It's an appropriate response to a bad intel, which until the thing was actually bombed enough people thought it was a legitimate threat. (and honestly, there's no proof it wasn't making chemicals that could produce nerve agents, and there was still a very good chance it was supply the bin Laden group with money, which makes it a decent target anyway if you're actually fighting a "war on terror")
When you invade a country, depose their leader, destabilize the entire region, torture citizens and attempt to convert an entire nation to your form of government and social expectations in a small amount of time, I think you need to be absolutely sure of what you're doing and absolutely have your facts straight. It's a much larger idea. If Bush had decided to bomb all of the sites in Iraq that may or may not have had "WMD's", and just left things alone, I believe that the entire world would have supported his decision, even if a few of them were inaccurate. (they can probably dig up enough circumstantial evidence to attempt to prove that there was something sinister going on at a few sites, but perhaps not all). Instead, Bush went the extra mile of righteousness, and invaded the entire country under a very weak pretext. I don't care how Republican or Democrat you are, this should be a Very Bad Thing. Especially now that we know there was very little to no threat from Iraq in the near future.
This should not be about any ignorant partisan politics. People are currently dying, there's no end in sight, and people want to turn things into a "blowjobs vs. bombs" debate.
What a wonderful country. I've never felt more ashamed to be American.
Apple found another reason for people to spend more money on an Apple media player, than any other brand's media player. Itunes content can only be played on an ipod, therefore Apple doesn't care about making a few pennies here or there at the itunes music store, they care greatly about having you buy a brand new video playing ipod, where they make at least $100 pure profit (maybe more, depending on the model) per unit sold, not to mention the vast amounts of profits on accessories and licensing the accessories. For a company that's going to release a home entertainment PC that will presumably be able to download movies from the itunes store and play them back on your PC, a Disney catalog represents millions and millions of dollars in sales on the new box. You can't target small children with the ipod as-is for the most part, but every parent knows "stick in a disney movie, get an hour and a half of peace". Money in the bank. Disney wins, Apple sells a lot of their new hardware next year without any effort at all because it's supported by a huge catalog of Things People Already Like.
okay, you're a little confused about how the music industry actually works, works for itself, and doesn't represent the rights and best interest of the musicians they "sign". (or indenture, depending on how you like to look at it).
Typical Major Label:
1. The label signs the artist. to a contract that allows the record label to own forever, the music that the artists create, giving the label all rights to income from the artists, forever. This means that someone who writes a song doesn't actually get credit for the song except for very small royalties. This is why Michael Jackson owns most of The Beatles works and profits from anyone buying older Beatles CD's today. They may in some cases give them a small chunk of good money up front. Unfortunately, this is almost always counted against future profits.
2. The label pays for expensive studio time. And then bills the artists against future royalties, ensuring that the label doesn't have to pay for a crappy album.
3. The rep from the label contacts the program directors at radio stations to get airplay. Sending your demo tape to a station will not get you on the air...reps who offer tickets at concerts and coop opportunities for bigger artists get airplay (because payola is technically illegal). This is why mainstream radio sounds exactly the same, and why plenty of good bands get absolutely no airplay. This is ruining music.
4. The label pays for CD duplication, printing, distribution. and again, bills the artist for this against future royalties. Thanks.
5. The label sends your CD to the music outlets. technically the music outlets purchase the CD's from the labels. They're not getting them for free. They're not even getting them at very good prices honestly, but that's all you get. Of course big high volume chains get a better price than small independent stores, but that's business. This is also ruining music, music stores, and the ability to find good music anywhere that isn't being stroked by the record labels to do it.
6. The label arranges concerts, merchandising, etc to make you rich (because we all know artists make nearly nothing on the music itself). And again, the label bills the band against profits for all the expenses they incur on a tour if they're the ones sponsoring it. That's why you get all the tours sponsored by Best Buy, Budweiser and any other promotional agency. The label takes in the $$ from promotion, bills the artists for the costs (and doesn't necessarily use the promotional windfalls to offset the touring expenses!) and takes their profit that way. Sometimes, depending on how much of their rights the band signed over to the label in the first place, the band has to give the labels a cut of concert profit, a cut of merch, and their share becomes an even smaller slice of the pie.
Can you imagine working for 2 years and being in more debt than when you started? This is what happens to most bands that sign a major label deal, but never end up being astoundingly popular and successful. When you've got 5 guys in a band, you'll be VERY lucky to turn an actual profit on a major label deal without selling 3+ million copies of an album and leading a very successful sold-out tour of mid-size venues. Clubs and small venues aren't going to cut it. This is also why moderately successful bands tour incessantly for 2+ years on one album. They're hugely in debt, and the labels usually have the least control over concert revenues (since often times concerts can and do lose lots of money and the record labels haven't figured out a way for a band to take the blame on that one if they try to profit off it at the same time). This is also why a band can have a slightly popular album, or a one-hit-wonder quality song, sell a million copies of an album (yay!) and never be heard from ever again. Their backs are against a wall, the record label owns everything they've created, and they're also in debt $100k to SonyBMG because S
This is an ignorant story by someone who doesn't even have any idea about the concert industry and the REAL problem, which is rampant scalping where %25-%50 of a venue is "pre-allocated" to scalping agencies and other people that have inside connections with Ticketmaster, the venue, or at worst hire a lot of people to stand in ticketmaster lines to get the best seats, only to re-sell them for at least triple face value.
Some creative and potentially smart but misguided tour management team got the idea a few years ago for Rolling Stones concerts, to charge scalper-level prices for all the tickets, in the same patterns that scalpers actually charge. Front row? $700+. 2nd - 5th rows? $500+, everything else that's in a "good" seat, double the crappy seats. Why let the scalpers make all the money (which in some cases could be up to half of the money that the band/tour actually hauls in) when you can just jack up your prices to "market level" and sell the venue accordingly?
It's a good plan from a financial sense, since all of the artists to adopt this plan (springsteen, stones, madonna to name a few) are on the top grossing artists list. They can sell less tickets, make more money, and when they do sell out, make a ton of money over what they would with normal flat-rate section based pricing. The bands with expensive concerts aren't hurting for money, they're only capitalizing on what they can make money on with almost no effort. People are somehow willing to pay outrageous amounts of money for prime seating at concerts, why let that money go to scalpers rather than the band?
Of course, it's unfortunate that this is their solution to scalping problems and other people getting rich off their efforts. Scalping is far too profitable for the venues and ticketmaster to want to stop, since they suck up a good chunk of inventory at a potentially undersold show and make even mediocre shows look more popular than they actually are. Artists need to step up and do something about it in a tangible way that doesn't directly affect the real music fans. Even fanclubs and special internet pre-sales are infested with scalpers, and the only way to get rid of them so far, has been to jack the prices up so high that they can't make a lot of profit off the tickets they can get. It's one thing to spend $1000 on 20 tickets you can flip for $5000 if you do well, and you can eat half the tickets if they don't sell since you're up 1500 if you sell half. It's another thing to spend $1000 on 2 tickets that you may not even be able to flip for $1500 since they're expensive already, and that deters scalpers at least slightly. (not entirely, you can find plenty of Madonna scalpers on your local craigslist I'm sure).
If anyone else has ideas on reducing the amount of scalpers out there, in a way that can get the maximum amount of tickets into the hands of real fans at face value, I'm sure you can make a lot of money.
They all are.
Simultaneously, when the 2008 (or 2009 now maybe) deadline hits.
The FCC I believe has already auctioned or allocated the bandwith being used by television stations for other industries, so they've got a high interest in making things happen like they should have happened a long time ago. This has been going on for the last 10 years, and anyone who doesn't know about it more or less just doesn't care enough about TV to probably care when their reception goes away. You can buy a digital antenna, and be just fine. Of course, you'll get the improved reception and clarity as a bonus, but if you're using a normal antenna right now... chances are you're not really too concerned about that, are you?
this ain't blackjack.
You don't count cards in poker. (well, you do, but everyone can see the cards at all times that are countable, and the deck is shuffled after every hand, so it's more like simple odds calculation and not "counting cards" like you saw in a movie somewhere)
http://maps.yahoo.com/maps_result?csz=Charlotte%2C +NC&state=NC&uzip=28202&ds=n&name=&desc=&ed=ZmqqR. p_0Tol2K1o94tozZKOm8y2Y4UWMv9nfsUOXmXck.GJK_VeuWmd 4ZeDCnuszT6aVdPGBrFJ8FnjYc2U0rs-&zoomin=yes&BFKey= &mag=4&resize=s&cat=shop&trf=1#mapcontent
That's nice isn't it? An advertisement for a new years party in Charlotte, NC where there's a severe report of a fire.
I'm not sure that's a party I want to be going to if they're already reporting a fire and it's a couple of weeks away. Sounds like someone has something planned...
The artists already give a cut to someone, and it's called the promoter. Currently, the big boy in the business is Clear Channel. http://cc.com/
Currently, the way it works is that you have to schedule tours through Clear Channel for the most part. There are some local organizations who will properly get promotion and venue arrangements in place, but even then they have to usually give a cut to Clear Channel for the rights to promote someone. Anyone who's worked in a campus concert promtion board knows that you mostly have to pay off Clear Channel before an artist will schedule a date on their tour in your city. For big artists Clear Channel may get $100k up front, smaller ones maybe as little as a few thousand, but they get paid before a single ticket is sold. The venue then takes their cut of the gate, extracts the costs from the leftover and then gives the rest to the artist, and in some cases a cut of that goes to Clear Channel again, depending on how it was negotiated. Merchandise is usually only split with the venue, but it wouldn't surprise me to see some of it go to Clear Channel also.
There used to be a rate card published for clear channel's upfront fees for an artist, but I can't find it anymore and it may not have been a public site. It is very interesting to see how much it would cost a venue promoter to book an artist, as some of them make quite a lot of money just for showing up.
If anything, I'd see Clear Channel getting pissed before the artists, because at the very least this would give artists an option of who to let them promote their tour in the future. Clear Channel or their record label directly, either way the artist is going to drop at least %20 of whatever the gate is, so you can deal with the devil you know, or....
maybe you missed the bit in Star Wars with Luke swatting at a childs toy in the Falcon while en route to Alderaan?
maybe you missed the bit where Luke was running around a swamp for -months- with Yoda to train?
You don't start off as a bad-ass, and to think you're going to jump into a game and be super hero Juke Skyjumper Junior is silly.
All the complaints I see, are "I'm not super bad-ass and I can't go kill everything and destroy the empire the first day I play the game and that sucks so the games sucks LOL".
It's not an RPG, if you don't start off as nothing and develop your abilities until they're a fully developed whatever you're going for. If you want instant equality, play Quake or Jedi Knight 2 if you must. That's probably what you're looking for instead.
Perhaps this article (and many similar ones written this week) should be read first before taking the first article with a grain of "downloading is bad" salt.
h tm l
http://www.antimusic.com/news/03/april/item19.s
The way the indie promotion business works is record labels pay the indie promoters to work directly with radio stations to get songs on the air. It is estimated that this system can cost over a $1 million to land a song on Top 40 radio.
A million dollars a song? No, there's no way you can lose money doing THAT with homogenized bland "sounds like" radio, is there?
An open note to record companies: Downloading is not hurting you as much as you're hurting yourself (and your audience indirectly) with the payola and other fat inside the company.
Want to make money again? Stop paying for radio to sound homogenic. Stop paying everyone and their grandmother bribes to tell people that the music you paid too much to record (michael jackson's invincible is a good one) doesn't suck and it's worth getting 40 spins a day on the top 100 stations in the US. Make programming directors at radio stations do their job and discover new music again, and break the stuff that needs to be broken, and let the copycat mainstream music stay on MTV, where they're content to just use what they're paid to play.
Give Radio back to the people, and you'll see that people want your music again, and it won't always be just the stuff you force feed them. If the same 25 songs weren't put on a loop with commercials on most radio stations, you'd see more than the same 25 albums being sold, and you'd likely not need to pay a million bucks a song (and with the typical 5 single album, that's 5 mil in useless waste, multiplied by perhaps 100 albums a year, that's half a billion dollars in useless waste, isn't it?).
Amazing where you can find profits these days, isn't it?
you obviously don't record concerts.
Nobody uses the built in preamp on a DAT deck, and the $500 in question would be for a used Sony TCD-D100, which in most people's consideration is not crap.
And binaural is a real word, look it up. If you recorded anything in concert, you'd understand it already, and I don't feel that responding to it is worth my time.
personally, I'd rather have a fully-digital device that can do 44.1/48 (which this can) and not have to deal with Minidisc, DAT's or anything at all that you have to transfer in real-time.
The potential is there though with this device, to work very well into the future as media gets cheaper and prices go down. 5 years ago, would you have assumed you could get a DVD-R for $2? 512MB of RAM for $50? 200gb of hard drive space for $150?
Of course not, with your thinking.
It's a shame so many people think that what exists now is the only thing that matters, and when someone shows you something that will likely be great a long time from now and is built with the expectation of advancement in technology, you say "bah, what is good now will always be good and who needs progress".
Perhaps smaller... but stealthier?
You can't smuggle in a DAT, get caught with it, and fake anything. You're toast.
Take an Ipaq into a concert and nobody will flip you more than a glance. You can even say you're writing down the setlist during the show. There's nothing worse than the dead giveaway of the blue backlight of a DAT recorder at a concert while you check your audio levels. If you know what you're looking for, you can always spot who's taping from the balcony. The only reason more people don't get busted, is because venue securities don't usually care, and band security is typically worried about the band during the show and has to assume that venue security catches tapers at the door, which they don't usually.
And most people don't really consider the preamp to be part of the "recording" solution, as it's mostly for the mics. People have different tastes in preamps and they're really more dependant on the mics than the recorder, so having a built in A/D converter would only limit the audience. Generally, if you record stuff, you don't use the mic-in on a DAT, you run it through a preamp first anyway, so this isn't exactly new ground.
exactly my thoughts!
I've never been caught, but I've always wondered what the hell to say to any security if they caught me. "Uh, it's my DAT Walkman, I jog with it, really". or "It's just a minidisc, no I forgot my headphones" or whatever.
PDA? Just show 'em some DopeWars or stocks, assuming they even ask, which I really doubt they'd bother since everyone knows those people who carry their PDA with them everywhere on their belt with their cellphone.
This takes half the problem away from stealthing at a show, definitely. I can't wait.
recording quality depends on your microphone kiddo, not your recording device.
And professional grade recording costs less than $2000, if you know how to shop and what to buy. We're talking field recording, which for the price of a DAT ($500) and a good set of microphones ($1000 will get a great pair of binaural mics, excellent for recording a concert) will get you going just fine.
I assume your "professional" runs the same as the people who pay for Monster Cable and assume that because it costs more, it has to be better.
the "big" tapes are DVCam, not MiniDV. Slight distinction.
Tape width is the same, but encoding quality isn't necessarily.
unless you're stuck in a massive metro area where it's unprofitable to replace and/or add fiber lines in the entire city.
We had this in another town in Kentucky (Murray, which is probably on par with Glasgow) and were the 2nd town in the US (Canada being one large rural area seemed to have a lot more broadband at the time) back in late 1996, early 1997.
The only notable thing, is that as this sort of thing gets widespread, cable companies will have to either add more value to the service (free PPV perhaps, or more digital channels) or price it cheaper. Competition is a wonderful thing. I paid $25/month for a cablemodem capable of 512k down/256k up in a city that had competing cable tv, internet and even local/longdistance telephone service. The existing cable company (Charter) had to drastically reduce prices, hurry out their digital tier services, and price them competitively, as in the course of a summer the Electric Company had started offering a cable package with 10 more channels than the Cable Company, for around 12 bucks a month, compared to the cable company's 25. They're still fighting and the person who will end up winning, is the consumer.
My cable bill in Kentucky was 55/month. This included digital cable and a cable modem. Now I move to a large city, and I'm paying 50/month just for DSL, cable was just as expensive, and I can't afford the digital cable at all, as that's another 50/month. Things were much different in a small town with two providers, and they're doing very well, and I have hope that the idea will catch on everywhere else eventually and the cable monopoly will get bumped aside in favor of fair prices and better service.
Wow, what a concept, the internet should be marketed TO and not AGAINST.
Revolutionary concept, yeah?
2 years too late Hillary. Shutting down napster was supposed to save the recording industry and stop music sharing right? Oops. We can only hope that the next person in charge happens to realize how to do more than load up a webpage and can understand that there are actually consumers using the internet, not "thieves".
You know, being a fan of the artists I don't understand this philosophy.
Currently I trade shows for a lot of artists, some taper-friendly, some quite unfriendly. I would DIE if a certain someone would start selling soundboard patches of her shows. If I were a huge fan of Phish, I'd LOVE It if I could get non-audienced recordings. They're going to sound better than what 9/10 tapers can accomplish with a good dat and mics in the crowd, even with a stand.
I've got a lot of Dave Matthews Band shows, both downloaded and every one of their live albums they've released. I would *love* to see a soundboard copy of their Nashville show I actually went to last year, and I'd pay 13 bucks for it easily. I'd probably pay a lot more for it if they asked, because primarily it'd be a board. Yeah, I've got 3 different recordings from the audience of the show, and while they're good, probably great for audience recordings, they're still... audience recordings.
I think you're more into the "taping and trading" than the band however, and you just want to "Pokemon" the artist and collect all their shows without much regard to the music.
They're not stopping that. They're just selling a better quality product for the people who want it. Obviously if you've been fine with audience recordings for the last 10 years, you'll be fine with them for a long time coming, especially with the proliferation of the 96k/24bit things going on now, and increasingly better mic quality. Phish is just offering a choice, which really isn't that what their music was in the first place? A choice of something different rather than the same old mainstream crap? They're not saying you can't trade, or tape. They're just saying you can't trade or tape their soundboards, which last I checked you couldn't do _anyway_. They've actually done one better IMO, and loosened their trading policy and said it's cool to keep trading the AUD's of the officially released things (since everything now will be) which means that nobody will have to buy anything.
It's just a nice thing to do, for the people who would prefer it.