They get a shit load less than that. They give up control over their career, their wardrobe, their album production, and their releases. They get a whole bunch of services charged at very expensive prices, all of which come right out of their paychecks. So the labels "loose" money in the same way that movie studios "break even" on so many movies: all the costs are up front, all the profits are on video release and foreign distribution, which are nearly pure profit. And all the real profits are hard to connect back to the source, particularly in the case of record labels, which rip off artists 99.999% of the time, according to a recent audit. So the artists get the short end of every stick.
Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters demonstrated this well recently; faced with exorbitant production costs for an album - costs that would come out of their own pockets and therefore don't count as part of what the band "gets" from the label - they built their own damn studio for $150K and recorded themselves. They saved themselves a ton of money and next time, they will save more because they don't have to build the studio.
What labels offer is a lottery ticket and an extremely expensive pack of professional services designed to make bands think they don't have to be businessmen and -women just long enough to fleece them. No doubt there are some long-shot deals where the label genuinely takes a bath, but by the time the label allegedly breaks even - meaning the band has in fact paid all of their own costs - the label has already made a substantial profit.
Holy shit that was the most clear-headed rant I've seen in a long time, and just about the only coherent one on the topic of publishing in the electronic age.
Zero minus zero equals zero. Read the rant, learn the phrase. Seriously. RIAA types and the IP-martial-law crowd still won't get it (because they can't conceive of anything from which they can't get a percentage), but the average person understands that going to a public library and reading a book is not theft, and neither is 0 - 0 = 0.
Yeah, a world where anyone can have anything essentially for free. I can see why that would be horrible.
Artificial scarcity is not the answer to mass production. The answer is more mass production. Or perhaps the entire industrial and technological revolution is a fluke?
Well, that and they think you're stupid. I've seen how news is made, and they regularly dumb things down because they assume you are stupid.
Sure there may be collusion at a higher level - ABC News big cheese David Westin has been known to kill stories he considers unflattering to himself or his friends (this has been reported publically) - but the real grunt work of dumbing it all down is done by people who are ratings-driven elitists, not by the Illuminati.
No, it's not. It's like going to a buffet that was advertised as "all you can eat". But when you get there, they give you a toothpick and say you must use the tootpick as your main utensil and you've got twenty minutes. And then, 15 minutes into your meal, they announce that some people are eating too much and they are going to charge by the plate.
The problem is that they advertise unlimited, try to plan based on expected usage, find that usage is higher than they thought, and try to scapegoat a few users. All this while bandwidth prices are plummeting, the threat of competition has been lifted, and out of the other side of their mouths they are asking for the computer to be eviscerated (through the former SSSCA) so the movie studios can offer content online without fear of piracy so people can download 10-100 times as much as they do now. Interesting.
Like it takes extra staff to notice half a dozen kids huddled around a computer screen giggling uncontrollably and mumbling things like "boobies!" every few seconds.
Kids have, since time immemorial, done this with National Geographic or anything else that depicts traditional peoples with exposed breasts. I fail to see why kids doing the same at open terminals (from which they can be banned for "misbehaving") constitutes such a threat to civilization.
Before snorting too loudly at the revolutionary nature of the Internet, it would be wise to consider the extreme legislation advanced in recent years to contain the free flow of information made possible by the Internet. If Internet isn't, in fact, revolutionary, then why are so many working so hard to counteract its effects?
So it's primarily the fact that users may possibly breaking the law that makes tricking them with a EULA written in an untested and perhaps not even legal contract in fact both legal and ethical. How many classes of Ethics 101 did you say you'd been to?
I helped someone install realplayer yesterday and they helpfully "agreed" you to a bunch of things by putting a bunch of unchecked boxes inside a combo box, while putting the checked ones down below, where you had to scroll to see them and are unlikely to look, since the unchecked boxes suggest that "no by default" is the answer. Sneaky and unethical? Yes. So what, I'm sure there must have been some illegal intent that makes it ok... not that you can spell "ethically challenged".
Obviously you don't live in New York City. There, everyone bitches about AT&T. I've known plenty of people to look for suckers to buy off their contracts. And Sprint coverage is really good there; I've gotten calls in the subway.
Some of this has to do with the same kind of "competition" that air carriers and bus lines engage in; choose areas where you won't pour your precious capital into beating the competition, choose areas where you'll blow them away, and choose areas where it's a real contest. Take what I said above and reverse the names of the companies, and you've got LA.
My only comment is that I can't believe they didn't win for best screenplay adaptation. I've reread the books since seeing FotR and it's amazing how many changes they made without subverting the original story, and how many smart decisions they made about compacting the story for the screen, and yet how much original dialogue made it into the film word for word. It's not easy satisfying rabid fans while also meeting the needs of the film. There was even a bit of commentary during the awards that the film almost wasn't made because it was deemed to difficult to bring it to the screen. No one said that about Beautiful Mind.
Well, I'll bet they've got two more chances at this one.
Hollings is apparently immune to the irony that HDTV itself is a demonstration that you can't legislate the functionality of consumer appliances; safety issues is one thing, but it's clear that the attempt to legislate the technological path failed. And it's sad to think of the avenues that get shut down; if I had a quiet computer with a large monitor and powerful graphics card capable of upgrading video quality on the fly, I'd think I got a much better deal that a $2K television that becomes obsolete around the same time that it becomes really useful.
On the other hand, lack of broadband penetration has a *lot* to do with availability. The notion that people aren't getting it because Disney films aren't available online is laughable. First off, the infrastructure couldn't really handle the load if everyone viewed streaming video for 8 hours a day. Second, prices are actually rising because the FCC has failed to use their regulatory power ot open markets, and has instead encouraged the "market" by giving monopoly powers a free hand to strangle the competition. If you don't think so, ask any of the hundreds of small (and many large) DSL providers wiped out in the last few years. Ask almost anyone who's tried to get DSL. Ask anyone who wants to host games on the internet, but can't because AOLTimeWarnerRoadRunner says so. Ask what the lack of pay-per-view Brittany Spears video from the Rat Kingdom has to do with that (though the video where her boob pops out is pretty funny).
The whole situation gets worse. If they enact these kind of controls, people will hold on to their legacy devices longer. Especially as the costs of compliance with this legislation are passed on to them. The electronics industries will lose, in real dollars, far more than the entertainment industry will lose in imaginary dollars (where the imaginary dollar is me downloading a track I wouldn't have bought anyway).
If this legislation passes, I bet the NASDAQ hits 500 within six months.
Right on. When various blackhole lists were still free, I was free to use them or not, depending on how I felt about the job they were doing. Personally, while I do think there are problems with the procedures by which mail servers get on and off the lists, I had a hard time arguing with the results, which stopped 90% of the spam I received, and never blocked something I wanted to get. Right now I'm just lazy and don't particularly care enough to find a non-subscription alternative.
Welcome to freedom. It ain't always easy, because people choose to do things you might not like. But compared to the alternatives - ICANN, for example - pragmatic anarchy often looks pretty good.
Oh, they'll let you release things without approval. That is, if you can afford the $25K license fee built in to the price of release-grade equipment. But mostly they figure that independent artists won't be able to afford it and will get pirated like crazy.
The irony is, pirates will be able to afford the release-grade equipment (even at black market prices) and will use it to continue churning out illegal copies.
If you become popular outside the system anyway (what? popularity without marketing megabucks? impossible!), the RIAA/MPAA gang will offer to distribute your work under terms that make current artist contracts look wonderful. They'll just say "Hey, it's more than what you're getting from the pirates." The net result will be that independent artists lose a ton, the signed artists lose even more, and the official purveyors of culture cackle manaically while 10K whores massage them with gold-flecked oils.
Re:Another article
on
Google Juice
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Nevertheless, this is the way google is supposed to work; it finds content on the web. If the content is BBSpam'd press releases, then the folks running the boards will figure out how improve the quality of their sites by bitchslapping spam out of their house. You can't blame Google for accurately finding crap. If a bunch of people with popular sites want to goof on their friend, they can. If they do it to an annoying degree, their sites will become less popular, fewer people will link to them, and they will lose their ability to influence rankings. Otherwise, google is just correctly reflecting the fact that a lot of people want to say that so-and-so is a talentless hack.
It should be noted that direct links as advertisements could get a rebound under Google. Why pay for a link that bounds through another domain when you could have, say, Slashdot provide a direct link to your site and therefore give you a Google boost? Does anyone know if the link from a site gets you any Google boost if it clicks through, say, a redirect through doubleclick?
Re:Will the SSSCA kill publishers?
on
SSSCA Editorials
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· Score: 2
The relatively certain effect of the SSSCA is that only "certified" hardware and software would create DRM-compliant files. So your home movie would have no copy protection, and the music you buy from Acme Megacorp would have strong copy protection. No one would any longer bother with enforcing copyright unless it's DRM-protected. So small bands would get pirated to hell, and major label bands would be relatively safe. So unless you have a major label contract or spend tons of money getting yourself DRM-approved, you have zero chance of being an independent artist.
The other option, a stronger DRM, is that you can't transmit files at all without DRM; no DRM == piracy. Say goodbye to sending copies of your digital photos to your family, unless you want to pay a certifier.
Leftist? Have you ever *seen* fox news? Also, I would have to say it's not traditional left-ist tactics to smash the Democrats' policies while giving Republicans tips on how to exploit them to win votes.
I do wish there were a more vivid description of what the SSSCA is trying to do - legislate that every computer and operating system and piece of software be engineered to prevent illegal copying of every bucket of bits, even though it would prevent much legal copying as well. This would also require that Linux and other free OSes be outlawed and require massive re-engineering of nearly every piece of consumer software, thus greatly increasing the cost to the consumer, while simultaneously giving record companies and movie studios a number of interesting ways to squeeze more dollars out of consumers for the privilege of enjoying goods they already bought.
well, i don't know why that would be modded flamebait, but microsoft has for very long shown such contempt for the process. they can't believe it can catch them. the recent claims that IE can't be removed just prove the unbelievable depth of their contempt for consumers and the legal system.
but it looks from available comments that these are just shitty mobos. choice is not a problem; BIOSen are better for having enable/disable options, not worse. if mobos are being crippled to meet MSFT demands, that's different, and foolish, tho so far Bill's gang hasn't suffered at all for having contempt for the legal system or their customers.
I bet I can go anyplace in the world and get 90% of people on the street to make an idiotic assertion. For example many in the Arabic world would now agree to the assertion that 4,000 Jews didn't show up for work on 9/11 on a tip. Many in the less, er, worldly parts of Europe are likely to believe that Americans have a diet consisting primarily of hamburgers. In much of Africa, people believe that heterosexuals can' t get AIDS; meanwhile, the continent is being decimated by it. No mass of people greater than 1000 is immune from this kind of idiocy.
You're absolutely right. I used junkbuster for a while, until I realized I just don't care. I'm big enough to make my own decisions about things, and if people want to try to convince me to try out what they've got, fine, just as long as I have the right to ignore them. If they do the panhandler-in-your-face thing, the only piece of my business they'll get is my foot in their backside.
Frankly, I don't mind if./ puts up larger ads. I won't pay not to see them. I would pay for karma, though, once or twice, just so I could burn it up with flamebait. The crapflooders and trolls get too much attention. Well-aimed flames don't get enough.
Fuck you very much for your time.
Re:The irony of the situation
on
SSSCA Hearing
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· Score: 2
Mod parent up, please. It's pithy, and the only way to explain this properly to Joe Dipshit. "If they pass this bill, you won't be allowed to own music or videos ever again. Sure, you can keep the disc, but basically you are renting it."
Man, the Democrats are screwing up on this one big time. I'm going to remember this one next time, I dunno, Kerry runs for prez.
They don't care. In fact, they went out of their way to show that last night during the Grammys, which contained a 1000-word extended rant on the evils of filesharing. I don't know the clown who was giving it, but I do know what when he said "or none of these fine artists would be able to bring their music to you" I thought "If it means the death of factory-made shit like you cram down our throats every day, I'm going to start downloading files now.... and not even listen to them! Ha ha ha! You mean I won't be able to hear Nelly Furtado if I steal her music? PROMISE???!!!!"
Anyway, the speech made clear to me that we are arriving at the most revisionist moment in history since writing was restricted to the priesthood. That's right, that speech at the Grammys was the most culturally backward moment in 3500 years. Sure, that sounds extreme, but consider this; in the year 3000, do you really believe that digital rights management is going to be a cornerstone of culture? And do you honestly think they'll be able to look backwards at 2001 and say "Thank god they stopped that Napster or we wouldn't have survived!" We are actually being asked to cripple the foundations of the technological future so that a small band of carnies i mean executives can keep their jobs holding the keys to the gilded cage where they keep Lars Ulrich.
No, pull the band-aid. Hard. Steal all the music you can and see what happens. It'll hurt for a minute, and then you'll see how much better everything is. All technology is theft; theft of power from above. Ever heard of Prometheus? It's trickery to get the power of the gods. So we found a powerful new fire and Rosen and Valenti are doing their best to say in booming voices "Put that back! Only the priesthood may hold an uncovered flame! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
Big music artists have *already* sold out. The majority of them were sold out before they even started. Some sold out when they figured that playing nice with the big money label man was the way to get their music heard. And some, like Lars Ulrich, stormed the castle, then stayed for dinner, then began walking out like Rosen's trained monkey, because he could see they'd start, you know, losing royalties owed him and stuff, and then he wouldn't be able to take tennis lessons from Andre Agassi any more. Just kidding Lars, it's not you're fault the biz is crooked, just for forgetting it's crooked.
Go ahead and tell us all about your own lack of values, but I don't give out respect to people because they have money or money behind them. And most people don't either. Remember Leif Garrett? Bay City Rollers? Peter Frampton? No? Well take a good look, because that's where your Brittany 'n' Sync rekkids are gonna be. Real respect grounded on Qualities doesn't fade away, while fake respect based on money dies when the party's over (just like power built on fear crumbles as soon as vulnerabilities appear).
Yeah, it works great until there you are one day, sitting on the beach and you hear about a tidal wave coming on the radio. You shut off your radio, but you realize that won't stop the tidal wave. So then you run to your car to drive away from the tidal wave, only you've been drinking on the beach. Can't start the car, so there you are, doomed because some little kid on his bike just has to live long enough to become a menace to society. The hell with you all!
Slashdot Mirror
Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters demonstrated this well recently; faced with exorbitant production costs for an album - costs that would come out of their own pockets and therefore don't count as part of what the band "gets" from the label - they built their own damn studio for $150K and recorded themselves. They saved themselves a ton of money and next time, they will save more because they don't have to build the studio.
What labels offer is a lottery ticket and an extremely expensive pack of professional services designed to make bands think they don't have to be businessmen and -women just long enough to fleece them. No doubt there are some long-shot deals where the label genuinely takes a bath, but by the time the label allegedly breaks even - meaning the band has in fact paid all of their own costs - the label has already made a substantial profit.
Zero minus zero equals zero. Read the rant, learn the phrase. Seriously. RIAA types and the IP-martial-law crowd still won't get it (because they can't conceive of anything from which they can't get a percentage), but the average person understands that going to a public library and reading a book is not theft, and neither is 0 - 0 = 0.
Artificial scarcity is not the answer to mass production. The answer is more mass production. Or perhaps the entire industrial and technological revolution is a fluke?
You think the teacher can't use your paper as a teaching instrument in classes? You poor sap. They can.
Sure there may be collusion at a higher level - ABC News big cheese David Westin has been known to kill stories he considers unflattering to himself or his friends (this has been reported publically) - but the real grunt work of dumbing it all down is done by people who are ratings-driven elitists, not by the Illuminati.
The problem is that they advertise unlimited, try to plan based on expected usage, find that usage is higher than they thought, and try to scapegoat a few users. All this while bandwidth prices are plummeting, the threat of competition has been lifted, and out of the other side of their mouths they are asking for the computer to be eviscerated (through the former SSSCA) so the movie studios can offer content online without fear of piracy so people can download 10-100 times as much as they do now. Interesting.
Kids have, since time immemorial, done this with National Geographic or anything else that depicts traditional peoples with exposed breasts. I fail to see why kids doing the same at open terminals (from which they can be banned for "misbehaving") constitutes such a threat to civilization.
Before snorting too loudly at the revolutionary nature of the Internet, it would be wise to consider the extreme legislation advanced in recent years to contain the free flow of information made possible by the Internet. If Internet isn't, in fact, revolutionary, then why are so many working so hard to counteract its effects?
So it's primarily the fact that users may possibly breaking the law that makes tricking them with a EULA written in an untested and perhaps not even legal contract in fact both legal and ethical. How many classes of Ethics 101 did you say you'd been to?
I helped someone install realplayer yesterday and they helpfully "agreed" you to a bunch of things by putting a bunch of unchecked boxes inside a combo box, while putting the checked ones down below, where you had to scroll to see them and are unlikely to look, since the unchecked boxes suggest that "no by default" is the answer. Sneaky and unethical? Yes. So what, I'm sure there must have been some illegal intent that makes it ok... not that you can spell "ethically challenged".
Some of this has to do with the same kind of "competition" that air carriers and bus lines engage in; choose areas where you won't pour your precious capital into beating the competition, choose areas where you'll blow them away, and choose areas where it's a real contest. Take what I said above and reverse the names of the companies, and you've got LA.
Well, I'll bet they've got two more chances at this one.
On the other hand, lack of broadband penetration has a *lot* to do with availability. The notion that people aren't getting it because Disney films aren't available online is laughable. First off, the infrastructure couldn't really handle the load if everyone viewed streaming video for 8 hours a day. Second, prices are actually rising because the FCC has failed to use their regulatory power ot open markets, and has instead encouraged the "market" by giving monopoly powers a free hand to strangle the competition. If you don't think so, ask any of the hundreds of small (and many large) DSL providers wiped out in the last few years. Ask almost anyone who's tried to get DSL. Ask anyone who wants to host games on the internet, but can't because AOLTimeWarnerRoadRunner says so. Ask what the lack of pay-per-view Brittany Spears video from the Rat Kingdom has to do with that (though the video where her boob pops out is pretty funny).
The whole situation gets worse. If they enact these kind of controls, people will hold on to their legacy devices longer. Especially as the costs of compliance with this legislation are passed on to them. The electronics industries will lose, in real dollars, far more than the entertainment industry will lose in imaginary dollars (where the imaginary dollar is me downloading a track I wouldn't have bought anyway).
If this legislation passes, I bet the NASDAQ hits 500 within six months.
Welcome to freedom. It ain't always easy, because people choose to do things you might not like. But compared to the alternatives - ICANN, for example - pragmatic anarchy often looks pretty good.
The irony is, pirates will be able to afford the release-grade equipment (even at black market prices) and will use it to continue churning out illegal copies.
If you become popular outside the system anyway (what? popularity without marketing megabucks? impossible!), the RIAA/MPAA gang will offer to distribute your work under terms that make current artist contracts look wonderful. They'll just say "Hey, it's more than what you're getting from the pirates." The net result will be that independent artists lose a ton, the signed artists lose even more, and the official purveyors of culture cackle manaically while 10K whores massage them with gold-flecked oils.
It should be noted that direct links as advertisements could get a rebound under Google. Why pay for a link that bounds through another domain when you could have, say, Slashdot provide a direct link to your site and therefore give you a Google boost? Does anyone know if the link from a site gets you any Google boost if it clicks through, say, a redirect through doubleclick?
The other option, a stronger DRM, is that you can't transmit files at all without DRM; no DRM == piracy. Say goodbye to sending copies of your digital photos to your family, unless you want to pay a certifier.
Starting to get the picture?
I do wish there were a more vivid description of what the SSSCA is trying to do - legislate that every computer and operating system and piece of software be engineered to prevent illegal copying of every bucket of bits, even though it would prevent much legal copying as well. This would also require that Linux and other free OSes be outlawed and require massive re-engineering of nearly every piece of consumer software, thus greatly increasing the cost to the consumer, while simultaneously giving record companies and movie studios a number of interesting ways to squeeze more dollars out of consumers for the privilege of enjoying goods they already bought.
but it looks from available comments that these are just shitty mobos. choice is not a problem; BIOSen are better for having enable/disable options, not worse. if mobos are being crippled to meet MSFT demands, that's different, and foolish, tho so far Bill's gang hasn't suffered at all for having contempt for the legal system or their customers.
I bet I can go anyplace in the world and get 90% of people on the street to make an idiotic assertion. For example many in the Arabic world would now agree to the assertion that 4,000 Jews didn't show up for work on 9/11 on a tip. Many in the less, er, worldly parts of Europe are likely to believe that Americans have a diet consisting primarily of hamburgers. In much of Africa, people believe that heterosexuals can' t get AIDS; meanwhile, the continent is being decimated by it. No mass of people greater than 1000 is immune from this kind of idiocy.
Sheepfuckers.
Frankly, I don't mind if ./ puts up larger ads. I won't pay not to see them. I would pay for karma, though, once or twice, just so I could burn it up with flamebait. The crapflooders and trolls get too much attention. Well-aimed flames don't get enough.
Fuck you very much for your time.
Man, the Democrats are screwing up on this one big time. I'm going to remember this one next time, I dunno, Kerry runs for prez.
Anyway, the speech made clear to me that we are arriving at the most revisionist moment in history since writing was restricted to the priesthood. That's right, that speech at the Grammys was the most culturally backward moment in 3500 years. Sure, that sounds extreme, but consider this; in the year 3000, do you really believe that digital rights management is going to be a cornerstone of culture? And do you honestly think they'll be able to look backwards at 2001 and say "Thank god they stopped that Napster or we wouldn't have survived!" We are actually being asked to cripple the foundations of the technological future so that a small band of carnies i mean executives can keep their jobs holding the keys to the gilded cage where they keep Lars Ulrich.
No, pull the band-aid. Hard. Steal all the music you can and see what happens. It'll hurt for a minute, and then you'll see how much better everything is. All technology is theft; theft of power from above. Ever heard of Prometheus? It's trickery to get the power of the gods. So we found a powerful new fire and Rosen and Valenti are doing their best to say in booming voices "Put that back! Only the priesthood may hold an uncovered flame! Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!"
Big music artists have *already* sold out. The majority of them were sold out before they even started. Some sold out when they figured that playing nice with the big money label man was the way to get their music heard. And some, like Lars Ulrich, stormed the castle, then stayed for dinner, then began walking out like Rosen's trained monkey, because he could see they'd start, you know, losing royalties owed him and stuff, and then he wouldn't be able to take tennis lessons from Andre Agassi any more. Just kidding Lars, it's not you're fault the biz is crooked, just for forgetting it's crooked.
Go ahead and tell us all about your own lack of values, but I don't give out respect to people because they have money or money behind them. And most people don't either. Remember Leif Garrett? Bay City Rollers? Peter Frampton? No? Well take a good look, because that's where your Brittany 'n' Sync rekkids are gonna be. Real respect grounded on Qualities doesn't fade away, while fake respect based on money dies when the party's over (just like power built on fear crumbles as soon as vulnerabilities appear).
Good point! If I thought it were intentional I'd say it's the best troll I've seen in a while.
You are absolutely right. And who teaches kids to share? Barney, the purple dinosaur. I say lock the bastard up before he can do any more harm!
Yeah, it works great until there you are one day, sitting on the beach and you hear about a tidal wave coming on the radio. You shut off your radio, but you realize that won't stop the tidal wave. So then you run to your car to drive away from the tidal wave, only you've been drinking on the beach. Can't start the car, so there you are, doomed because some little kid on his bike just has to live long enough to become a menace to society. The hell with you all!