in the past, the RIAA always shipped considerably more units than were sold. Why the change? Retails stores simply want less inventory, so they order less, even though they are selling more.
This trend is commonplace everywhere. Retail outlets don't want things sitting on their shelves for two reasons: First, because they have to PAY for them and second if they don't sell, they have to PAY to ship them back.
What the record stores are doing has been done for years in most other retail outlets. It's called "Just in Time" inventory. For example, a grocery store tries to predict how much lettuce they'll sell and only buys that much, lest they get stuck with rotting produce. McDonald's made a science of this back in the '90's.
Now, the RIAA wants to use this new inventory trend to SPREAD THEIR LIES! It shows just how dirty rotten to the core they are! They KNOW what's going on; they're cherry picking stastics to LIE!!
If former generations were as sue crazy as the past few have been, we'd all be driving horse drawn carriages on old dirt roads and using the telegraph to communicate.
These days, lawsuits are used to stifle INNOVATION like bever before.
There are FIVE major labels...FIVE!!
They control 90+ percent of the music in the WORLD.
If we didn't have a republican controlled everything, they'd likely be proscecuted under the RICO statute as a cartel!
Instead, Congress gets nice fat deposits in Switzerland and everything's fine RIGHT??
The bottom line is this: MP3.com tried to buck the cartel. The cartel (with the help of law enforcement) destroyed them.
Period....
A perfect (textbook) example of how government works AGAINST the people!
In their hearings before the Senate, that Senator did ask the head of the RIAA if they were going to go down to the local grade school and round up the usual suspects!
I guess they took his lead!
Bay Star is a 'hedge' company, another way of saying they are a leech. They buy companies that are worth more parted out and then call the scrap man. But then again, they DO have that LONG six year legacy to fall back on, don't they?
First off, let me say that I've seen unions from both sides of the table. I was a shop steward in an IBEW shop, and saw people one third as experienced as me get paid twice as much as I was simply because they had put in more time. I've also been directly involved in contract negotiations as management.
Right now, workers NEED unions! The simple fact is that the pendulum has swung too far in the employer's direction for it to ever equalize back. It's kind of 'stuck' up there. Only organized labor is going to have any chance of ever movig it a little down from it's present high horse. Whether you want to admit it or not, there's safety in numbers! Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro union, I'm PRO WORKER! It's just that management has made a science out od screwing workers. Unions have their problems too: Corruption, nepotism, and deadwood.
BUT that said, the plusses (unfortunately) FAR OUTWEIGH any minuses for at least the near future...maybe even longer!
Here in Los Angeles county where unemployment is higher then the national average, it's estimated that Pr0n accounts for over 100,000 jobs. Great idea Johnny Asscroft! Get RID of jobs during a recession!!
This is about spin and control. The record industry's profit/distribution/business model has been turned on its ear. They don't know how to respond, so they sue everyone in sight, bribe (oops! - "LOBBY") lawmakers. etc. All to keep the status quo while they figure it out. So far they haven't been able to. After all, digital distribution (MP3's etc.) have only been around for OVER FIVE YEARS ALREADY!! Besides, we wouldn't want the MARKETPLACE to decide, would we? God forbid another company be allowed to take business from them!
See, the RIAA is sleazy and corrupt. They are a cartel. Five companies (soon to be four if they have their way) control something like 90% of the recorded music available for sale in the world. They like their monopoly. They want to keep their monopoly. Wouldn't you?
So, they lie cheat, bribe and do whatever they have to in order to keep the cash cow giving milk. If that means telling Congress that CD sales are down 10% due to downloading when the real reason is that they MANUFACTURED LESS CD's in order to keep the prices up, so be it. After all, the way they see it, you're not really lying, you're just SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH by witholding information.
Besides, don't you think that Congress KNOWS what they're doing??!! After all, the politicians INVENTED SPIN!. Don't you think they know whan they're being spun? It's just that the spin comes with a nice bribe attached.
We have the best Government that $$ can buy and until they're voted out, nothing will change!
... And don't hold your breath for THAT to happen!:(
And as anyone who's ever wrked for him knows, he's a one trick pony (Microsoft). Basically everything else he's owned he's screwed up.
This is very good news indeed....
This isn't just local TV. CBS owns a bunch of cable/satellite only networks that would alos be affected.
This will wind up being a PR nightmare for CBS. Just watch....
ABC pulled this crap a few years ago with a cable operator, and the public (and FCC) backlash
was to say the least, massive!
I'd have thought that with all the crap their Infinity radio division is having with the FCC, not to mention the Janet Jackson flap they'd be doing their best to stay off the radar screen!
I don't know whether these big companies are arrogant or stupid, but it sure illustrates why media monopolies are bad for the consumer.
"This is a very difficult issue for us," Marsh said. "It is a huge disappointment to us that we would be thrown in the same bucket, so to say, with the SCO Group. We didn't make any admission that their IP was used in Linux. Our public position is certainly not to support that, and our intent was simply to take us out of the loop, not to make us public enemy number one."
So sorry Mr. Marsh, but if you're the big executive you claim to be, you should have known long ago that if you sleep with a rotten apple, its stink will most certainly rub off onto you....
First off, let's dispense with the "he said, she said" content here. My divorce lawyer once said to me: "There are three sides to every divorce: your side, her side and the truth!"
So, let's try to stick to the facts:
Fact #1. This guy built and hosted the web site and paid for the domain name.
Last time I looked, it cost money for bandwith, so some one was paying something. The Sheriff's Dept. admits it wasn't them paying, so it must have been him. Bandwith for 3.5 million hits costs what? $1000.00/month? $5000.00/month?
I don't know the exact amount, but this still is a tidy sum of money.
Next, someone paid for the computers to host this site, the rent for the place to house them, the electricity to run them, upgrading, maintenance, etc. Another fairly substantial cost.
Next, someone had to build the web site. It's likely quite slick to win all these awards, and took someone quite a bit of time, not to mention the cost of the computer programs used to create it.
Okay, no one disputes that the guy did all these things. Maybe in the beginning he DID offer to do them for free....
BUT.....(and this is a big but....)
A year ago, he went to the Sheriff's Dept. and told them he couldn't afford to do this for free any more. I'm sure that the bandwidth cost for millions of hits/month were getting pretty steep for him. I'm sure he had to provide mega large servers out of his pocket for hosting too. The Sheriff offered to help him by allowing him to sell ads on the site. It's fairly obvious that the Sheriff was getting MUCH MORE from this site then the guy was. I'm sure the site got much bigger then both of them ever expected it to... In any event, it's fairly obvious that the guy let the Sheriff know of his hardship at least a year before he actually pulled the plug. The Sheriff even admitted this when he allowed the guy the right to place ads on the site.
The way I see this is that it was unreasonable for the Sheriff to expect unlimited web hosting in perpetuity, especially where the costs of providing such hosting had obviously increased dramatically over when the offer was first made (of course, I'm assuming the web site didn't have 3 million + hits a month the first day it opened). There IS an implied contract here actually. That contract was to provide web hosting and email for a small county's Police Dept, NOT a mega site visited 3+ million times a month by people from over 60 countries. The fact that this guy offered his benevolence (and his money!)for as long as he did (in a major economic downturn no less!) should not be cause to put him in jail for extortion. The Sheriff should have known that the gravy train would eventually come to an end, and actually HAD a year's notice that it was fast approaching the station!
This sheriff should be fired for several reasons. The first is stupidity. A high school student should have been able to see that this site was costing much more to run then one man can provide for free. Worse, the guy TOLD HIM it was a year BEFORE he pulled the plug!
Second, is due to police brutality. There was NO criminal activity here! At best, this should have gone to a CIVIL court.
Finally, for theft. The Sheriff had NO RIGHT to confiscate that computer equipment. By doing that (and jailing the guy), he likely put the guy out of business permanently. What a reward, huh? It's like giving the Sheriff a gun for his birthday and then having him shoot you with it!
With friends like that Sheriff, who needs enemies?
There are some interesting parallels. First off, they both treat their customers like criminals, assuming that they have stolen from them, then wonder why their sales are down. Second, they both are completely ignorant of how hated they are by their peers. Third, they both employ high powered attorneys who would rather sue then negotiate anything.
Finally, both seem completely clueless regarding the fact that technology has made them obsolete. Rather then embracing the new frontier, they both seem to want to sue it out of existance.
This last reason is why both will ultimately fail.....
This is beyond tacky...In fact it's SO beyond tacky that I question whether it actually happened.
I mean think about it...if true it re-defines insensitivity.
I notice that these photos made it quickly and prominently onto The Faux News Channel. I wonder if the announcement that they are forgeries will be broadcast with 1/10th the gusto!
Anyone care to give me odds on this?
It's bad enough that our 2.4 gig band is already saturated by wifi, cordless phones and microwave ovens...or half our 220 band was taken from us and then hardly used...or our 40 meter band is so overrun with high power SW broadcasters it's unusable...or our 10 meter band is half taken over by CBers running illegal high power on illegal frequencies...or that we have to be constantly vigilant that the rest of our UHF spectrum isn't taken away.
NOW you want to destroy our entire HF spectrum too..along with short wave broadcasting. Don't any of you understand that power lines make great HF antennas? Or that at HF frequencies with an efficient antenna all you need is 100 milliwatts (.1 watt) to be heard across the world? Just imagine what THOUSANDS of these BPL transmitters running one watt or more will do to the shortwave bands worldwide! Plus, other countries use HF for broadcasting. Just because we happen not to here in the USA doesn't mean we have the right to destroy their radio stations with hash interference.
Please...PLEASE...leave us alone for once!
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There was a book out in the '60's called: "How to Lie With Statistics" Basically, you can find (or create) a statistic to say anything you want.
This trend is commonplace everywhere. Retail outlets don't want things sitting on their shelves for two reasons: First, because they have to PAY for them and second if they don't sell, they have to PAY to ship them back.
What the record stores are doing has been done for years in most other retail outlets. It's called "Just in Time" inventory. For example, a grocery store tries to predict how much lettuce they'll sell and only buys that much, lest they get stuck with rotting produce. McDonald's made a science of this back in the '90's.
Now, the RIAA wants to use this new inventory trend to SPREAD THEIR LIES! It shows just how dirty rotten to the core they are! They KNOW what's going on; they're cherry picking stastics to LIE!!
If former generations were as sue crazy as the past few have been, we'd all be driving horse drawn carriages on old dirt roads and using the telegraph to communicate. These days, lawsuits are used to stifle INNOVATION like bever before. There are FIVE major labels...FIVE!! They control 90+ percent of the music in the WORLD. If we didn't have a republican controlled everything, they'd likely be proscecuted under the RICO statute as a cartel! Instead, Congress gets nice fat deposits in Switzerland and everything's fine RIGHT?? The bottom line is this: MP3.com tried to buck the cartel. The cartel (with the help of law enforcement) destroyed them. Period.... A perfect (textbook) example of how government works AGAINST the people!
In their hearings before the Senate, that Senator did ask the head of the RIAA if they were going to go down to the local grade school and round up the usual suspects! I guess they took his lead!
Bay Star is a 'hedge' company, another way of saying they are a leech. They buy companies that are worth more parted out and then call the scrap man. But then again, they DO have that LONG six year legacy to fall back on, don't they?
The RIAA Fu$&s it up!
First off, let me say that I've seen unions from both sides of the table. I was a shop steward in an IBEW shop, and saw people one third as experienced as me get paid twice as much as I was simply because they had put in more time. I've also been directly involved in contract negotiations as management. Right now, workers NEED unions! The simple fact is that the pendulum has swung too far in the employer's direction for it to ever equalize back. It's kind of 'stuck' up there. Only organized labor is going to have any chance of ever movig it a little down from it's present high horse. Whether you want to admit it or not, there's safety in numbers! Don't get me wrong, I'm not pro union, I'm PRO WORKER! It's just that management has made a science out od screwing workers. Unions have their problems too: Corruption, nepotism, and deadwood. BUT that said, the plusses (unfortunately) FAR OUTWEIGH any minuses for at least the near future...maybe even longer!
Here in Los Angeles county where unemployment is higher then the national average, it's estimated that Pr0n accounts for over 100,000 jobs. Great idea Johnny Asscroft! Get RID of jobs during a recession!!
This begs the ques
Well, DO you?
Pure and simple.
This is about spin and control. The record industry's profit/distribution/business model has been turned on its ear. They don't know how to respond, so they sue everyone in sight, bribe (oops! - "LOBBY") lawmakers. etc. All to keep the status quo while they figure it out. So far they haven't been able to. After all, digital distribution (MP3's etc.) have only been around for OVER FIVE YEARS ALREADY!! Besides, we wouldn't want the MARKETPLACE to decide, would we? God forbid another company be allowed to take business from them!See, the RIAA is sleazy and corrupt. They are a cartel. Five companies (soon to be four if they have their way) control something like 90% of the recorded music available for sale in the world. They like their monopoly. They want to keep their monopoly. Wouldn't you?
So, they lie cheat, bribe and do whatever they have to in order to keep the cash cow giving milk. If that means telling Congress that CD sales are down 10% due to downloading when the real reason is that they MANUFACTURED LESS CD's in order to keep the prices up, so be it. After all, the way they see it, you're not really lying, you're just SUPPRESSING THE TRUTH by witholding information.Besides, don't you think that Congress KNOWS what they're doing??!! After all, the politicians INVENTED SPIN!. Don't you think they know whan they're being spun? It's just that the spin comes with a nice bribe attached.
We have the best Government that $$ can buy and until they're voted out, nothing will change!... And don't hold your breath for THAT to happen! :(
And as anyone who's ever wrked for him knows, he's a one trick pony (Microsoft). Basically everything else he's owned he's screwed up. This is very good news indeed....
The irony is that right now, Tech TV is owned by Vulcan Ventures....which in turn is owned by Paul Allen....
Does this mean I've bought over a terabyte of storage for $110.00?
Hmmm...110/1020 = 10.8 cents per gigabyte of storage! That HAS to break the price barrier!This isn't just local TV. CBS owns a bunch of cable/satellite only networks that would alos be affected. This will wind up being a PR nightmare for CBS. Just watch....
I'd have thought that with all the crap their Infinity radio division is having with the FCC, not to mention the Janet Jackson flap they'd be doing their best to stay off the radar screen!
I don't know whether these big companies are arrogant or stupid, but it sure illustrates why media monopolies are bad for the consumer."This is a very difficult issue for us," Marsh said. "It is a huge disappointment to us that we would be thrown in the same bucket, so to say, with the SCO Group. We didn't make any admission that their IP was used in Linux. Our public position is certainly not to support that, and our intent was simply to take us out of the loop, not to make us public enemy number one." So sorry Mr. Marsh, but if you're the big executive you claim to be, you should have known long ago that if you sleep with a rotten apple, its stink will most certainly rub off onto you....
...will you sue me for your coming up with the idea first?? LOL!
First off, let's dispense with the "he said, she said" content here. My divorce lawyer once said to me: "There are three sides to every divorce: your side, her side and the truth!"
So, let's try to stick to the facts:
Fact #1. This guy built and hosted the web site and paid for the domain name. Last time I looked, it cost money for bandwith, so some one was paying something. The Sheriff's Dept. admits it wasn't them paying, so it must have been him. Bandwith for 3.5 million hits costs what? $1000.00/month? $5000.00/month? I don't know the exact amount, but this still is a tidy sum of money.
Next, someone paid for the computers to host this site, the rent for the place to house them, the electricity to run them, upgrading, maintenance, etc. Another fairly substantial cost.
Next, someone had to build the web site. It's likely quite slick to win all these awards, and took someone quite a bit of time, not to mention the cost of the computer programs used to create it.
Okay, no one disputes that the guy did all these things. Maybe in the beginning he DID offer to do them for free....
BUT.....(and this is a big but....)
A year ago, he went to the Sheriff's Dept. and told them he couldn't afford to do this for free any more. I'm sure that the bandwidth cost for millions of hits/month were getting pretty steep for him. I'm sure he had to provide mega large servers out of his pocket for hosting too. The Sheriff offered to help him by allowing him to sell ads on the site. It's fairly obvious that the Sheriff was getting MUCH MORE from this site then the guy was. I'm sure the site got much bigger then both of them ever expected it to... In any event, it's fairly obvious that the guy let the Sheriff know of his hardship at least a year before he actually pulled the plug. The Sheriff even admitted this when he allowed the guy the right to place ads on the site.
The way I see this is that it was unreasonable for the Sheriff to expect unlimited web hosting in perpetuity, especially where the costs of providing such hosting had obviously increased dramatically over when the offer was first made (of course, I'm assuming the web site didn't have 3 million + hits a month the first day it opened). There IS an implied contract here actually. That contract was to provide web hosting and email for a small county's Police Dept, NOT a mega site visited 3+ million times a month by people from over 60 countries. The fact that this guy offered his benevolence (and his money!)for as long as he did (in a major economic downturn no less!) should not be cause to put him in jail for extortion. The Sheriff should have known that the gravy train would eventually come to an end, and actually HAD a year's notice that it was fast approaching the station! This sheriff should be fired for several reasons. The first is stupidity. A high school student should have been able to see that this site was costing much more to run then one man can provide for free. Worse, the guy TOLD HIM it was a year BEFORE he pulled the plug! Second, is due to police brutality. There was NO criminal activity here! At best, this should have gone to a CIVIL court. Finally, for theft. The Sheriff had NO RIGHT to confiscate that computer equipment. By doing that (and jailing the guy), he likely put the guy out of business permanently. What a reward, huh? It's like giving the Sheriff a gun for his birthday and then having him shoot you with it!
With friends like that Sheriff, who needs enemies?
There are some interesting parallels. First off, they both treat their customers like criminals, assuming that they have stolen from them, then wonder why their sales are down. Second, they both are completely ignorant of how hated they are by their peers. Third, they both employ high powered attorneys who would rather sue then negotiate anything. Finally, both seem completely clueless regarding the fact that technology has made them obsolete. Rather then embracing the new frontier, they both seem to want to sue it out of existance. This last reason is why both will ultimately fail.....
This is beyond tacky...In fact it's SO beyond tacky that I question whether it actually happened. I mean think about it...if true it re-defines insensitivity.
I notice that these photos made it quickly and prominently onto The Faux News Channel. I wonder if the announcement that they are forgeries will be broadcast with 1/10th the gusto! Anyone care to give me odds on this?
Read my post below...
It's bad enough that our 2.4 gig band is already saturated by wifi, cordless phones and microwave ovens...or half our 220 band was taken from us and then hardly used...or our 40 meter band is so overrun with high power SW broadcasters it's unusable...or our 10 meter band is half taken over by CBers running illegal high power on illegal frequencies...or that we have to be constantly vigilant that the rest of our UHF spectrum isn't taken away. NOW you want to destroy our entire HF spectrum too..along with short wave broadcasting. Don't any of you understand that power lines make great HF antennas? Or that at HF frequencies with an efficient antenna all you need is 100 milliwatts (.1 watt) to be heard across the world? Just imagine what THOUSANDS of these BPL transmitters running one watt or more will do to the shortwave bands worldwide! Plus, other countries use HF for broadcasting. Just because we happen not to here in the USA doesn't mean we have the right to destroy their radio stations with hash interference. Please...PLEASE...leave us alone for once!
and cut your nose off with it to spite your face!