Hehe, good article Charlie. Ironic how your article gets posted to an open source site hosted by OSDN, and gets slammed by some people instead of built upon, innit? Your sentiment of using their own laws to infuriate them is genius at it's core. Sign me up.
I'm all with not paying a dime to them until the RIAA change their attitude, or got lost altogether. I either buy used, or indie, or download or burn, and still the RIAA companies get a royalty on the CDR I use... The practical difficulty in TOTAL FINANCIAL BOYCOTT (and believe me I'm with you) lies in the fact that the companies that make up the RIAA are ultimately responsible for a HUGE percentage of the entertainment market (cinema, DVDs, ISPs, radio, TV, Playstation, etc). So I don't buy the Warner Bros album, but they get my blue-collar dollar anyway b/c I pay for HBO to watch the Sopranos and Six Feet Under and boxing. THOSE BASTARDS!
Audio fingerprinting could work for the publishers in a way not unlike BMI/ASCAP handles radio royalties. In Fanning's scheme the users could pay by volume (DL'd 100 @ $.85 + 150 @ $.00 = $85) while the royalties are paid out like radio. Hmmm.
Again, good for free music. Plus pays copyright holders. I am all for it. Especially if the Windows masses get a simple, spyware free P2P client out of the deal.
William Wallace: Unite us! Unite the Clans!
(said to Robert the Bruce)
I'd love to see how anyone could get every player in the music industry to agree on a delivery method for music-over-IP, once and for all. Shawn Fanning could be the one to spark it, unfortunately the article is scant on the technical details.
I gotta admit, this article gives me an "aw shucks, wouldn't that be nice" kinda warm and fuzzy feeling...until the record company guys start quibbling at the end of the article. I shiver every time any record label guy talks about "what the users want".
Of course, Fanning's system would still require voluntary compliance on the part of the enduser (as there will always be a way to copy music for free).
I wonder what the enduser fees and resulting royalty percentages will be? Hopefully Kazaa, et al makes out better than a webcaster did under that webcasting royalty scheme. IMHO I would love to see the return of Napster, simple and spyware free for the Windows masses.
It's a great plan for unsigned bands if they can be distributed for free alongside fee-based music (say, Metallica). That's for damn sure.
Maybe their Metallica and the Grateful Dead have the same terms on paper, but I strongly doubt that The Dead would ever sue a p2p company, alleging infringement.
For an insider's perspective on record company dealings with artists, check out "The Problem With Music" by Nirvana producer Steve Albini. I'll spare us all the math for brevity (read the article for the balance sheet), but Albini's "real life example" has the band making "7-11" paychecks on sales of 250,000 units of their debut LP, supported by a fairly successful tour, complete with the math that explains the financial f*cking of the band.
Quick excerpt (the intro):
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water...
At the risk of sounding redundant, I'll say it: The historical music distribution model is a dying species. Currently the model is in the control of 10 or so huge corps (including radio/concert promotions). The sooner these corps are forced to stop clinging to a half-century old model while strangling the music-over-IP baby in the crib, the better for musicians and music lovers everywhere...out-of-print catalogs can be made available again, and consumer choice in music CAN be democratized by technology like iTMS. The labels can profit handsomely if they define the changes rather than fight them.
It's not like we live in a world where you need to ship CDs en masse to record stores. It's not like we live in a world where there can only be so many stations broadcasting over AM/FM. The majors should have understood the impact that bandwidth would eventually have on their business back in 1998. Had they acted upon an ounce of foresight, maybe I wouldn't hate them so much today.
PS: I still buy music (used cds, or direct from artists). And to be fair, the labels already get a royalty on every CD-R I buy. I just can't condone the major's behavior (via the RIAA) so I can't justify funding it. They change their behavior, I change my attitude.
There was a time not long ago that I expected a pay-for-perfect-downloads system to be launched by the major labels, back in the days when I got my first home cable modem and Napster was still a baby... At the time I was looking forward to the convenience of a real (authorized) download service launched by the labels, and was willing to happily pay a subscription fee for the service.
Now, four years later I refuse to spend even ONE of my blue-collar dollars on music, because of the labels treatment of P2P users (music lovers) as criminals. I refuse to grant the RIAA the sanction of the victim. They'll just take my dollar and use it to perpetuate their rotten behavior (could be anything from suing college kids, to illegally fixing the price of CDs, to nearly legislating internet radio out of existence, to signing the next Britney and paying Clear Channel via the NEW payola system (radio promotion consultants) to play her ad-nauseum.
The major record labels crying foul on ethical grounds? Next thing you know burglars will be suing the people they rob. Oh wait...
The price of an individual Office app is higher than it's value for exactly that reason...the decision to buy the whole Office suite becomes a no-brainer (thereby extending M$ dominance in the market for productivity apps).
That pricing strategy is quite intentional on M$'s part. At vendor meetings, Microsoft tells VARs that if a customer needs more than one Office app (ie. Excel AND Word), sell them the Office suite. If a customer needs only one app (ie Word only), persuade the customer that if they will ever need a second Office app, it's "cheaper" for them to buy the whole Office suite, and that they get 3-4 more apps for that extra $100.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (a former conservative radio talk show host) owns part interest (a $1M-5M dollar investment) in The Macarthy Group, which owns a company called "Election Systems & Software". Sen. Hagel was, at one time, the chairman of ES&S. ES&S supplied the voting machines that count approximately 60% of all votes cast in the United States, and they counted all the votes in Hagel's 1996 upset and 2002 landslide wins in Nebraska. ES&S is loathe to reveal the source code.
Sen. Hagel neglected to disclose his interest in ES&S on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, claiming that his interest in The Macarthy Group (a privately held banking company) was exempt as an "exempted investment fund" (a rule which exempts candidates from disclosing their mutual fund holdings). Hagel's financial disclosures (or lack thereof) from 1996-2002 can be found here.
Also interesting, in 1996 Hagel became the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years to win a Senate seat helped in part by an unprecendented show of support by the black community who had never before voted republican.
Slashdot Mirror
Hehe, good article Charlie. Ironic how your article gets posted to an open source site hosted by OSDN, and gets slammed by some people instead of built upon, innit? Your sentiment of using their own laws to infuriate them is genius at it's core. Sign me up.
ROFLMAO at the really really dumb sheep bit.
All great ideas are at first ridiculed. Or someone sues over them. Or Congress gets involved, and regulates the great idea to pieces.
with love,
Rearden Metal.
I'm all with not paying a dime to them until the RIAA change their attitude, or got lost altogether. I either buy used, or indie, or download or burn, and still the RIAA companies get a royalty on the CDR I use... The practical difficulty in TOTAL FINANCIAL BOYCOTT (and believe me I'm with you) lies in the fact that the companies that make up the RIAA are ultimately responsible for a HUGE percentage of the entertainment market (cinema, DVDs, ISPs, radio, TV, Playstation, etc). So I don't buy the Warner Bros album, but they get my blue-collar dollar anyway b/c I pay for HBO to watch the Sopranos and Six Feet Under and boxing. THOSE BASTARDS!
Audio fingerprinting could work for the publishers in a way not unlike BMI/ASCAP handles radio royalties. In Fanning's scheme the users could pay by volume (DL'd 100 @ $.85 + 150 @ $.00 = $85) while the royalties are paid out like radio. Hmmm.
Again, good for free music. Plus pays copyright holders. I am all for it. Especially if the Windows masses get a simple, spyware free P2P client out of the deal.
William Wallace: Unite us! Unite the Clans!
(said to Robert the Bruce)
I'd love to see how anyone could get every player in the music industry to agree on a delivery method for music-over-IP, once and for all. Shawn Fanning could be the one to spark it, unfortunately the article is scant on the technical details.
I gotta admit, this article gives me an "aw shucks, wouldn't that be nice" kinda warm and fuzzy feeling...until the record company guys start quibbling at the end of the article. I shiver every time any record label guy talks about "what the users want".
Of course, Fanning's system would still require voluntary compliance on the part of the enduser (as there will always be a way to copy music for free). I wonder what the enduser fees and resulting royalty percentages will be? Hopefully Kazaa, et al makes out better than a webcaster did under that webcasting royalty scheme. IMHO I would love to see the return of Napster, simple and spyware free for the Windows masses.
It's a great plan for unsigned bands if they can be distributed for free alongside fee-based music (say, Metallica). That's for damn sure.
Brittney may not be a musician per se, but she is the inspiration for an awful lot of flute solos.
"Their stance is the same as the Dead's."
...when you consider that a Grateful Dead lyricist (John Perry Barlow) co-founded the Electronic Frontier Foundation, whereas Lars Ulrich has sued Napster.
uhhhh....not exactly...
Maybe their Metallica and the Grateful Dead have the same terms on paper, but I strongly doubt that The Dead would ever sue a p2p company, alleging infringement.
For an insider's perspective on record company dealings with artists, check out "The Problem With Music" by Nirvana producer Steve Albini. I'll spare us all the math for brevity (read the article for the balance sheet), but Albini's "real life example" has the band making "7-11" paychecks on sales of 250,000 units of their debut LP, supported by a fairly successful tour, complete with the math that explains the financial f*cking of the band.
Quick excerpt (the intro):
Whenever I talk to a band who are about to sign with a major label, I always end up thinking of them in a particular context. I imagine a trench, about four feet wide and five feet deep, maybe sixty yards long, filled with runny, decaying shit. I imagine these people, some of them good friends, some of them barely acquaintances, at one end of this trench. I also imagine a faceless industry lackey at the other end holding a fountain pen and a contract waiting to be signed. Nobody can see what's printed on the contract. It's too far away, and besides, the shit stench is making everybody's eyes water...
I hope you're right Mac, I honestly do.
At the risk of sounding redundant, I'll say it: The historical music distribution model is a dying species. Currently the model is in the control of 10 or so huge corps (including radio/concert promotions). The sooner these corps are forced to stop clinging to a half-century old model while strangling the music-over-IP baby in the crib, the better for musicians and music lovers everywhere...out-of-print catalogs can be made available again, and consumer choice in music CAN be democratized by technology like iTMS. The labels can profit handsomely if they define the changes rather than fight them.
It's not like we live in a world where you need to ship CDs en masse to record stores. It's not like we live in a world where there can only be so many stations broadcasting over AM/FM. The majors should have understood the impact that bandwidth would eventually have on their business back in 1998. Had they acted upon an ounce of foresight, maybe I wouldn't hate them so much today.
PS: I still buy music (used cds, or direct from artists). And to be fair, the labels already get a royalty on every CD-R I buy. I just can't condone the major's behavior (via the RIAA) so I can't justify funding it. They change their behavior, I change my attitude.
There was a time not long ago that I expected a pay-for-perfect-downloads system to be launched by the major labels, back in the days when I got my first home cable modem and Napster was still a baby... At the time I was looking forward to the convenience of a real (authorized) download service launched by the labels, and was willing to happily pay a subscription fee for the service.
Now, four years later I refuse to spend even ONE of my blue-collar dollars on music, because of the labels treatment of P2P users (music lovers) as criminals. I refuse to grant the RIAA the sanction of the victim. They'll just take my dollar and use it to perpetuate their rotten behavior (could be anything from suing college kids, to illegally fixing the price of CDs, to nearly legislating internet radio out of existence, to signing the next Britney and paying Clear Channel via the NEW payola system (radio promotion consultants) to play her ad-nauseum.
The major record labels crying foul on ethical grounds? Next thing you know burglars will be suing the people they rob. Oh wait...
The city council's proposal we're discussing can be found in PDF format here. .
Does the US invasion of Iraq makes the world:
(a) safer?
(b) more dangerous?
Anybody who claims to already know the answer to that fundamental question can be totally disregarded, and thrown on the pile with Miss Cleo.
that the Earth is about to be demolished to make way for an interstellar bypass.
The price of an individual Office app is higher than it's value for exactly that reason...the decision to buy the whole Office suite becomes a no-brainer (thereby extending M$ dominance in the market for productivity apps). That pricing strategy is quite intentional on M$'s part. At vendor meetings, Microsoft tells VARs that if a customer needs more than one Office app (ie. Excel AND Word), sell them the Office suite. If a customer needs only one app (ie Word only), persuade the customer that if they will ever need a second Office app, it's "cheaper" for them to buy the whole Office suite, and that they get 3-4 more apps for that extra $100.
Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (a former conservative radio talk show host) owns part interest (a $1M-5M dollar investment) in The Macarthy Group, which owns a company called "Election Systems & Software". Sen. Hagel was, at one time, the chairman of ES&S. ES&S supplied the voting machines that count approximately 60% of all votes cast in the United States, and they counted all the votes in Hagel's 1996 upset and 2002 landslide wins in Nebraska. ES&S is loathe to reveal the source code. Sen. Hagel neglected to disclose his interest in ES&S on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, claiming that his interest in The Macarthy Group (a privately held banking company) was exempt as an "exempted investment fund" (a rule which exempts candidates from disclosing their mutual fund holdings). Hagel's financial disclosures (or lack thereof) from 1996-2002 can be found here. Also interesting, in 1996 Hagel became the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years to win a Senate seat helped in part by an unprecendented show of support by the black community who had never before voted republican.