Even if you listed 1000, I'm sure it would be something like a tiny single digit percentage (or less) of the total artists on labels...
I'd bet that 1,000 acts would be about 20 percent of the total roster. EMI had less than 1,000 acts two downsizings ago. According to Time, the industry is down to an average of 12,000 releases a year and quite a few of them are compilations.
a fairly obvious attempt at clouding objective discussion by appealing to sympathy. It annoys me constantly, and I would think any semi-intelligent person would see right through this.
At least it's an actual fact, in contrast to the RIAA's fiction-based pleas for sympathy -- "they're stealing our stuff," "downloading is theft," and the most recently added, "ripping a CD to mp3 is copyright infringement."
I'm fairly certain that record companies get NOTHING from touring.
They're working on that. The new "360-degree" deal gives them 30% of tour income. The common 15 percent royalty on CD sales goes up to 30 percent.
This means the record company gains a cut of tour money (It's actually the biggest source of a band's income) and the artists get twice the nothing they currently get from record sales.
Remember that they're "on their last" $200B leg...
$200B??
Have you looked at these guys' financial statements? At the wholesale level (which is the gross income of the labels) the US record biz was only worth about $7 billion last year, if that. You have to go back almost 20 years to find sales as low as they were last year. And this year has been worse.
If the record labels pooled all their assets (without counting the pile of money that Sony makes from selling electronics -- just the music division), they wouldn't have $200B between them.
Lots of change is coming, change that should have come long ago.
Like 360 contracts? Did you happen to see the Doug Morris interview at Wired? The guy runs the largest record company in the world. Thinks dealing with the Internet and digital is "like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney."
EMI has new owners who are looking around and can't understand what the hell EMI has been doing because the books are a nightmare that shows what's really been going on all these years. And the rest of the label owners "have nothing to add" when trying to figure out where to go from here.
EMI is reported to be strongly considering not funding things like the RIAA, IFPI, BPI and the rest of the acronyms. But EMI is the smallest of the Big Four.
And they can change all they want to but it's going to be a long road back due to their (all the majors, not just EMI) attitude toward music fans (not to be confused with consumers). Bronfman's recent attempt at saying the war with consumers was "inadvertent" just ain't gonna fly. It was no accident.
Everything else aside, it doesn't matter how much they change if their taste in music remains the same. There are grown-ups out here, too. We'd like to hear some music for a change. Instead, we're left praying that Led Zeppelin actually does a new record and they sell it outside the major label system so we can buy it with a good conscience.
What are they going to accomplish by going after college kids, who really don't have that much disposable income?
It's not their disposable income that the MAFIAA is after; it's their tuition money.
When the RIAA lawsuits started four years ago, they started with Princeton and schools with "Polytechnic" in their names. I thought that attacking those kids in particular -- future lawyers and techno-geeks -- was pinnacle of stupidity on their part. I was sure that, given the collective intelligence of the RIAA, those were exactly the kind of students capable of coming up with a technical/legal way to whack the RIAA real hard on the side of the head with a blunt object.
But here we are four years later, the RIAA has sued about 30,000 people and the movie biz decides it's time to get their cut.
Slim to none, since RIAA artists are usually too busy making money from their music...
They really don't have a choice since the record label never pays any royalties from record sales. That's why most acts keep working until they all die....to chit-chat with fans via email.
So don't write to them unless you have a real question. The first time I wrote to Rick Wakeman, I had an answer in 10 minutes. The answer was "Not a chance," but at least he answered. Lots of people that seem unapproachable really aren't. In fact, when they're out making money, that means they're spending a lot of time stuck in hotel rooms. They get bored just like the rest of us.
As for Non-RIAA music...
http://www.dmusic.com/ Lots of artists. Been there since before the original mp3.com and has become an artist community as well as a showcase. Lots of interaction, idea exchange and collaborations. DMusic also owns the http://www.boycott-riaa.com/ site, so if concern about not supporting the RIAA has finally entered your music selection process, well, that's where it came from.
Now if we could just convince the techies to do what the RIAA has been asking for all along... delete their music from the Internet instead of providing them with free distribution...
this is a bill to encourage education about the law, and the consequences of breaking it.
Which law are you talking about?
U.S. copyright laws do not contain a single instance of the words "downloading," "download," or "piracy."
The only time the word "downloading" appears in the entire U.S Code is as some sort of defense for possessing child pron.
The only time the word "download" appears in the U.S. Code in relation to copyrighted material is in the section on counterfeiting, only applies to criminal offenses, and requires that the person making the copies "sells or rents" them.
To recap: There is no law prohibiting downloading and the whole "making available" issue only comes into effect if there's a "sale or rental." Since there is no law that even mentions the activity, college kids using p2p cannot possibly be breaking any laws. There should be no consequences.
Video piracy: "The illegal copying and sale or rental of copyrighted motion pictures."
Note the presence of the word "and" in that definition. There is not a comma there. The "illegal copying" is not in and of itself a violation, unless accompanied by "sale or rental."
The point being that stealing has a definition which you are STILL failing to apply to your rhetorical nonsense.
I create music. Someone downloads a copy. I have lost nothing. It cannot be stolen. I would be happy to get a nickle for every download, but I am certainly not entitled to it, although I probably would be by now if the RIAA hadn't sued Napster out of existence. You can play semantics around it all day long and call it whatever you want, but there's no theft going on. Downloading music is not a crime; only downloading RIAA music is.
The legal violation is defined by the nature of who owns it, not what it is.
you wouldn't think knowing what words mean and being precise would be too much to ask.
Apparently it IS too much to ask, since you choose to make up your own definitions. I was precise. Piracy is copyright infringement for profit. You chose to ignore that. I could be more precise and say that according to the U.S. Code, the definition of piracy has to do with sea-going vessels.
Radio airplay was called piracy for the first 17 years. They were wrong then, too, just like they were wrong about piano rolls, cassettes, DAT, VCRs and everything else created in the last 100 years that involves music in any way, shape or form.
They are entitled to payment for each copy
There are two types of musical copyrights. The owner of the sound recording is NOT entitled to be paid for each copy offered for sale, only the ones they sell. The authors of the words and music are entitled to be paid for each copy manufactured. And for digital, we're talking about one copy. A dime will cover the mandatory royalties.
But the authors aren't suing people for downloading/file sharing. Neither are the artists -- just the sound recording copyright owners and then only the miniscule number of them that comprise the RIAA.
As the owner of several copyrights, both words and music, and sound recordings, I am not entitled to anything unless my work is used for commercial purposes or publicaly performed, no matter how delusional I may be about its value. And, even though ASCAP and BMI make every club owner in the country pay performance royalties, I can play my own music in clubs every night and have airplay but I'll still never see a dime if ASCAP doesn't hear it, even though I may be technically entitled to royalties.
Your third example is too vague to go anywhere with. Who is deducting? Deducting from what?
I'm sorry. With all the talk of entitlement, I thought I was talking to someone familiar with the music business and how the authors are compensated for their work. Obviously, I was wrong.
Copyright owners are... entitled to be paid for the copies they make available for sale.
That's pretty damn arrogant, not to mention being flat-ass wrong. While they may be entitled to be paid for the copies they sell, every copy they make available for sale is not necessarily sold. And if you're talking about digital files, you only make one copy.
And we all know that "copyright owner" means "record label," not "artist" or "author."
It's really very simple. Piracy is stealing
In 2003, someone stole a car out of my garage, in the daytime, when people were home. That sucker is gone. It ain't coming back. I posted a bunch of songs on my website and, after more than 100,000 downloads, they're still there and the authors still own them. In three years, no one has managed to steal a single one.
Piracy is not theft, it's copyright infringement for profit. Casual p2p users are not making any money from anyone else's music, they're just looking for new music. Since radio no longer provides that service, they look for crappy mp3s on the Internet. The industry is saving billions on promotional copies that they simply don't have to make any longer, not to mention the break they got in promotional costs when Spitzer made them stop paying the radio stations to play their music.
Not paying artists the royalties they earned? Settling for 10 cents on the dollar when they do catch you? Still deducting for "new media" and promotional goods? That's stealing.
You appear to be very concerned with accounting chicanery on behalf of the record companies -- as well you should be, particularly if you are a signed artist. But I am not sure how it is germaine.
This story actually comes from Robert Fripp's diary., "On this day, specifically, the EMI audit."
The entire story is about accounting "chicanery" at EMI. Unsigned artists need to be aware of this more than the signed artists, who already know but it was too late when they found out. They had already signed.
What is not germaine is the past insignificant history of the RIAA. The RIAA equalization curve is a straight line. The gold records are spray-painted.
The biggest argument for more draconian copyright laws is rampant copyright infringement. Unfortunately, many in the tech community do not see that and think that laws get over-turned when people ignore them: with few exceptions, that attitude flies in the face of history.
With the major exception being the story of ASCAP trying to sue radio out of existence in the 1920s, based on their interpretation of the law, and a Supreme Court decision that said once you bought a copy of a recording, it was yours and you could do whatever the hell you wanted with it, including broadcast it, which ASCAP was certain was a copyright infringement.
Then there was the Betamax case, wherein the movie studios were certain that recording a movie with your VCR was illegal.
In fact, all of the major exceptions I can think of involve the music/movie industry, all the way back to Thomas Edison, who sued every filmmaker east of the Mississippi, driving the independents to California, where they started a town called Hollywood.
The position of the techies in the current scenario is that they have control. Out of the millions who use file sharing regularly, the RIAA has sued 26,000, most of them decided NOT techies, if they were even actually alive at the time of the alleged infringement.
The techies could stop the RIAA. But they won't.
I haven't been able to comprehend why, but the techies have this bizarre idea that by offering free distribution of the RIAA's music, this is going to hurt them. Don't point to CD sales as proof that they are. The industry has cut new releases by 67 percent since 2000 and only took a 40 percent hit in sales.
The techies are helping them be more efficient. After all, if it weren't for p2p, where could you even hear new music from the RIAA to even decide whether or not you like it, much less are willing to throw down cash for? Not on the radio, that's for sure.
If the techies want to help, they should figure out how to delete the RIAA from p2p. Instead, they turned p2p into a jelly donut with RIAA filling, much like radio did when it was fighting ASCAP. It took radio 17 years to figure out that the answer to the constant annoyance of ASCAP was to simply play something else.
The p2p issue has gone almost 8 full years now. Do we have to wait 9 more years before the techies figure out that they just need to erase the bastards and the problem is solved?
Originally, iTunes only played mp3 files. DRM was added at the insistence of the cartel. If Apple had not created a DRM scheme, they would have been denied the licenses to sell the songs in the first place. And keep in mind that the labels really wanted individual tracks to be at least $2.49 each.
IMHO, it's too bad Steve Jobs didn't tell them to take a flying leap. The RIAA would be in even deeper shit than they already are had Apple not sold 3 billion songs for them. The second largest seller of digital tracks is eMusic (just over 100 million songs sold last I heard) and they don't have RIAA tunes.
That would leave the RIAA's digital sales in the hands of...uh...WalMart?
And that $12 billion is more like $10 billion, but even then that's only how much it would have been if everyone had paid the "manufacturer's suggested retail price". Reality is closer to $6 billion.
According to TFA, the defendent *still* doesn't have the copyrights to the songs, even if the registrations are wrong - in that case, the registered copyright is still to record companies.
That is exactly what the RIAA wants to stipulate, which relieves them of the burden of actually produce the copyrights to prove that they do, in fact, own the songs in question.
Here's why it is important, and not just in Jammie Thomas' case:
Back when the RIAA was suing mp3.com, they were ready to bring in a pile of thousands of copyright forms to establish that they were the true owners. But here's the thing... some of the artists have the wild-ass, crazy idea that maybe they might own those songs. As a result, they didn't the copyrights forms to be introduced as evidence because this could make it difficult to challenge the label's claim to ownership later.
The backlash from the artists on this point was enough to make the RIAA settle the mp3.com case out of court.
I'd be surprised if the RIAA actually starts producing copyright forms. So will Sheryl Crow.
I know you are, and many of us greatly appreciate it. But you've gotta admit, your job would be a lot tougher if anyone at the RIAA or MediaSentry had a technological clue or, heaven forbid, any actual evidence.
Did TFA also mention the fact that the case was dropped because the next step was a jury trial and the RIAA had no evidence? Did it also mention that "the lady" was a case manager for the DOJ and knows exactly what is involved in proving the kind of action she filed?
The RIAA is going to get nailed to the wall by Tanya Andersen and I, for one, will laugh mockingly at the rotting corpse.
Really? Where did he get a copy before it even hit theatres? George Lucas sent him a preview DVD? Complete guilt is rightfully assigned to the person that smuggled the copy out of the studio. This guy is just the pigeon taking the rap so that the inside man can keep his job and get access to more films.
I have purchased hundreds and hundreds of music CD's over the years. I have quit. After hearing what the RIAA was doing, I could no longer support such a company. How can you quantify that affect?
The RIAA counts all those CDs you (and I) used to buy as lost sales and blames it on P2P. In my case, I've stopped buying major label music mostly because of the lawsuits, but also because I simply do not hear any new music. The radio isn't playing anything new and it definitely isn't playing anything that doesn't belong to the cartel.
But if you think about it, the mergers and consolidation over the last seven years has released probably a third of the acts from their contracts. The underachievers, like Van Morrison. The future of music looks good, as soon as the RIAA dies.
Of course, any p2p discussion is not complete without the reminder that after 20,000 lawsuits, they have yet to prove their case in court. Every case that comes close to a trial is dropped because they have NO evidence. Just silly theories based on half-truths.
Which is what I'd call this "music piracy study". A silly theory based on half-truths.
Is the entire basis of the RIAA claims in all of these cases striking anyone else as being entirely based on "it may have been" scenarios being used as proof?
Each and every link in their "evidence" is based on assumptions, not fact.
Apparently ignorant about wireless, routers, and subnets, their arguments take the erroneous position that every IP address points to a unique computer at a given moment. And that they know who was standing in front of it. Even if they were already dead.
That's why everyone who says "Prove it" wins in the long run.
Really? Did they take someone to trial and win today?
The function of the lawsuits isn't to make money. The goal is to scare people away from file sharing and back into the music store, either bricks and mortar or online.
They're doing a bang-up job there, too. Tower Records says "Thanks" for the extra traffic.
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Even if you listed 1000, I'm sure it would be something like a tiny single digit percentage (or less) of the total artists on labels...
I'd bet that 1,000 acts would be about 20 percent of the total roster. EMI had less than 1,000 acts two downsizings ago. According to Time, the industry is down to an average of 12,000 releases a year and quite a few of them are compilations.
a fairly obvious attempt at clouding objective discussion by appealing to sympathy. It annoys me constantly, and I would think any semi-intelligent person would see right through this.
At least it's an actual fact, in contrast to the RIAA's fiction-based pleas for sympathy -- "they're stealing our stuff," "downloading is theft," and the most recently added, "ripping a CD to mp3 is copyright infringement."
It's not a good idea. The fact is a lot of artists would lose a lot of money
How about if the copyright is stripped from the record label and given over to the artists which appear on it?
I don't want to learn that the music I already like is under the RIAA and now I'm obligated by political correctness to dislike it.
That's silly. Boycotting the RIAA does not mean you have to dislike the artists or the music. It just means you don't buy the CDs.
I'm fairly certain that record companies get NOTHING from touring.
They're working on that. The new "360-degree" deal gives them 30% of tour income. The common 15 percent royalty on CD sales goes up to 30 percent.
This means the record company gains a cut of tour money (It's actually the biggest source of a band's income) and the artists get twice the nothing they currently get from record sales.
Remember that they're "on their last" $200B leg...
$200B??
Have you looked at these guys' financial statements? At the wholesale level (which is the gross income of the labels) the US record biz was only worth about $7 billion last year, if that. You have to go back almost 20 years to find sales as low as they were last year. And this year has been worse.
If the record labels pooled all their assets (without counting the pile of money that Sony makes from selling electronics -- just the music division), they wouldn't have $200B between them.
Lots of change is coming, change that should have come long ago.
Like 360 contracts? Did you happen to see the Doug Morris interview at Wired? The guy runs the largest record company in the world. Thinks dealing with the Internet and digital is "like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney."
EMI has new owners who are looking around and can't understand what the hell EMI has been doing because the books are a nightmare that shows what's really been going on all these years. And the rest of the label owners "have nothing to add" when trying to figure out where to go from here.
EMI is reported to be strongly considering not funding things like the RIAA, IFPI, BPI and the rest of the acronyms. But EMI is the smallest of the Big Four.
And they can change all they want to but it's going to be a long road back due to their (all the majors, not just EMI) attitude toward music fans (not to be confused with consumers). Bronfman's recent attempt at saying the war with consumers was "inadvertent" just ain't gonna fly. It was no accident.
Everything else aside, it doesn't matter how much they change if their taste in music remains the same. There are grown-ups out here, too. We'd like to hear some music for a change. Instead, we're left praying that Led Zeppelin actually does a new record and they sell it outside the major label system so we can buy it with a good conscience.
What are they going to accomplish by going after college kids, who really don't have that much disposable income?
It's not their disposable income that the MAFIAA is after; it's their tuition money.
When the RIAA lawsuits started four years ago, they started with Princeton and schools with "Polytechnic" in their names. I thought that attacking those kids in particular -- future lawyers and techno-geeks -- was pinnacle of stupidity on their part. I was sure that, given the collective intelligence of the RIAA, those were exactly the kind of students capable of coming up with a technical/legal way to whack the RIAA real hard on the side of the head with a blunt object.
But here we are four years later, the RIAA has sued about 30,000 people and the movie biz decides it's time to get their cut.
Slim to none, since RIAA artists are usually too busy making money from their music...
...to chit-chat with fans via email.
They really don't have a choice since the record label never pays any royalties from record sales. That's why most acts keep working until they all die.
So don't write to them unless you have a real question. The first time I wrote to Rick Wakeman, I had an answer in 10 minutes. The answer was "Not a chance," but at least he answered. Lots of people that seem unapproachable really aren't. In fact, when they're out making money, that means they're spending a lot of time stuck in hotel rooms. They get bored just like the rest of us.
As for Non-RIAA music...
http://www.dmusic.com/ Lots of artists. Been there since before the original mp3.com and has become an artist community as well as a showcase. Lots of interaction, idea exchange and collaborations. DMusic also owns the http://www.boycott-riaa.com/ site, so if concern about not supporting the RIAA has finally entered your music selection process, well, that's where it came from.
Now if we could just convince the techies to do what the RIAA has been asking for all along... delete their music from the Internet instead of providing them with free distribution...
this is a bill to encourage education about the law, and the consequences of breaking it.
Which law are you talking about?
U.S. copyright laws do not contain a single instance of the words "downloading," "download," or "piracy."
The only time the word "downloading" appears in the entire U.S Code is as some sort of defense for possessing child pron.
The only time the word "download" appears in the U.S. Code in relation to copyrighted material is in the section on counterfeiting, only applies to criminal offenses, and requires that the person making the copies "sells or rents" them.
To recap: There is no law prohibiting downloading and the whole "making available" issue only comes into effect if there's a "sale or rental." Since there is no law that even mentions the activity, college kids using p2p cannot possibly be breaking any laws. There should be no consequences.
Video piracy: "The illegal copying and sale or rental of copyrighted motion pictures."
Note the presence of the word "and" in that definition. There is not a comma there. The "illegal copying" is not in and of itself a violation, unless accompanied by "sale or rental."
The point being that stealing has a definition which you are STILL failing to apply to your rhetorical nonsense.
I create music. Someone downloads a copy. I have lost nothing. It cannot be stolen. I would be happy to get a nickle for every download, but I am certainly not entitled to it, although I probably would be by now if the RIAA hadn't sued Napster out of existence. You can play semantics around it all day long and call it whatever you want, but there's no theft going on. Downloading music is not a crime; only downloading RIAA music is.
The legal violation is defined by the nature of who owns it, not what it is.
you wouldn't think knowing what words mean and being precise would be too much to ask.
Apparently it IS too much to ask, since you choose to make up your own definitions. I was precise. Piracy is copyright infringement for profit. You chose to ignore that. I could be more precise and say that according to the U.S. Code, the definition of piracy has to do with sea-going vessels.
Radio airplay was called piracy for the first 17 years. They were wrong then, too, just like they were wrong about piano rolls, cassettes, DAT, VCRs and everything else created in the last 100 years that involves music in any way, shape or form.
They are entitled to payment for each copy
There are two types of musical copyrights. The owner of the sound recording is NOT entitled to be paid for each copy offered for sale, only the ones they sell. The authors of the words and music are entitled to be paid for each copy manufactured. And for digital, we're talking about one copy. A dime will cover the mandatory royalties.
But the authors aren't suing people for downloading/file sharing. Neither are the artists -- just the sound recording copyright owners and then only the miniscule number of them that comprise the RIAA.
As the owner of several copyrights, both words and music, and sound recordings, I am not entitled to anything unless my work is used for commercial purposes or publicaly performed, no matter how delusional I may be about its value. And, even though ASCAP and BMI make every club owner in the country pay performance royalties, I can play my own music in clubs every night and have airplay but I'll still never see a dime if ASCAP doesn't hear it, even though I may be technically entitled to royalties.
Your third example is too vague to go anywhere with. Who is deducting? Deducting from what?
I'm sorry. With all the talk of entitlement, I thought I was talking to someone familiar with the music business and how the authors are compensated for their work. Obviously, I was wrong.
Copyright owners are... entitled to be paid for the copies they make available for sale.
That's pretty damn arrogant, not to mention being flat-ass wrong. While they may be entitled to be paid for the copies they sell, every copy they make available for sale is not necessarily sold. And if you're talking about digital files, you only make one copy.
And we all know that "copyright owner" means "record label," not "artist" or "author."
It's really very simple. Piracy is stealing
In 2003, someone stole a car out of my garage, in the daytime, when people were home. That sucker is gone. It ain't coming back. I posted a bunch of songs on my website and, after more than 100,000 downloads, they're still there and the authors still own them. In three years, no one has managed to steal a single one.
Piracy is not theft, it's copyright infringement for profit. Casual p2p users are not making any money from anyone else's music, they're just looking for new music. Since radio no longer provides that service, they look for crappy mp3s on the Internet. The industry is saving billions on promotional copies that they simply don't have to make any longer, not to mention the break they got in promotional costs when Spitzer made them stop paying the radio stations to play their music.
Not paying artists the royalties they earned? Settling for 10 cents on the dollar when they do catch you? Still deducting for "new media" and promotional goods? That's stealing.
Not if you pass on the hookers and cocaine. Pick up a guitar, press record, play a song, upload to the Internet.
in our economic framework it takes effort to organize all the bits in software...
Then you're doing it wrong.
...has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with making entertainment. Those are the costs associated with trying to make money, not entertainment.
You appear to be very concerned with accounting chicanery on behalf of the record companies -- as well you should be, particularly if you are a signed artist. But I am not sure how it is germaine.
This story actually comes from Robert Fripp's diary., "On this day, specifically, the EMI audit."
The entire story is about accounting "chicanery" at EMI. Unsigned artists need to be aware of this more than the signed artists, who already know but it was too late when they found out. They had already signed.
What is not germaine is the past insignificant history of the RIAA. The RIAA equalization curve is a straight line. The gold records are spray-painted.
The biggest argument for more draconian copyright laws is rampant copyright infringement. Unfortunately, many in the tech community do not see that and think that laws get over-turned when people ignore them: with few exceptions, that attitude flies in the face of history.
With the major exception being the story of ASCAP trying to sue radio out of existence in the 1920s, based on their interpretation of the law, and a Supreme Court decision that said once you bought a copy of a recording, it was yours and you could do whatever the hell you wanted with it, including broadcast it, which ASCAP was certain was a copyright infringement.
Then there was the Betamax case, wherein the movie studios were certain that recording a movie with your VCR was illegal.
In fact, all of the major exceptions I can think of involve the music/movie industry, all the way back to Thomas Edison, who sued every filmmaker east of the Mississippi, driving the independents to California, where they started a town called Hollywood.
The position of the techies in the current scenario is that they have control. Out of the millions who use file sharing regularly, the RIAA has sued 26,000, most of them decided NOT techies, if they were even actually alive at the time of the alleged infringement.
The techies could stop the RIAA. But they won't.
I haven't been able to comprehend why, but the techies have this bizarre idea that by offering free distribution of the RIAA's music, this is going to hurt them. Don't point to CD sales as proof that they are. The industry has cut new releases by 67 percent since 2000 and only took a 40 percent hit in sales.
The techies are helping them be more efficient. After all, if it weren't for p2p, where could you even hear new music from the RIAA to even decide whether or not you like it, much less are willing to throw down cash for? Not on the radio, that's for sure.
If the techies want to help, they should figure out how to delete the RIAA from p2p. Instead, they turned p2p into a jelly donut with RIAA filling, much like radio did when it was fighting ASCAP. It took radio 17 years to figure out that the answer to the constant annoyance of ASCAP was to simply play something else.
The p2p issue has gone almost 8 full years now. Do we have to wait 9 more years before the techies figure out that they just need to erase the bastards and the problem is solved?
So what? It doesn't pertain to the case at all.
Yes, let's not let actual facts get in the way of the RIAA's theoretical case and blatant lies to the judge.
Save that for the punitive damages counter-claim.
Originally, iTunes only played mp3 files. DRM was added at the insistence of the cartel. If Apple had not created a DRM scheme, they would have been denied the licenses to sell the songs in the first place. And keep in mind that the labels really wanted individual tracks to be at least $2.49 each.
IMHO, it's too bad Steve Jobs didn't tell them to take a flying leap. The RIAA would be in even deeper shit than they already are had Apple not sold 3 billion songs for them. The second largest seller of digital tracks is eMusic (just over 100 million songs sold last I heard) and they don't have RIAA tunes.
That would leave the RIAA's digital sales in the hands of...uh...WalMart?
And that $12 billion is more like $10 billion, but even then that's only how much it would have been if everyone had paid the "manufacturer's suggested retail price". Reality is closer to $6 billion.
According to TFA, the defendent *still* doesn't have the copyrights to the songs, even if the registrations are wrong - in that case, the registered copyright is still to record companies.
That is exactly what the RIAA wants to stipulate, which relieves them of the burden of actually produce the copyrights to prove that they do, in fact, own the songs in question.
Here's why it is important, and not just in Jammie Thomas' case:
Back when the RIAA was suing mp3.com, they were ready to bring in a pile of thousands of copyright forms to establish that they were the true owners. But here's the thing... some of the artists have the wild-ass, crazy idea that maybe they might own those songs. As a result, they didn't the copyrights forms to be introduced as evidence because this could make it difficult to challenge the label's claim to ownership later.
The backlash from the artists on this point was enough to make the RIAA settle the mp3.com case out of court.
I'd be surprised if the RIAA actually starts producing copyright forms. So will Sheryl Crow.
I am working to get you that last laugh.
I know you are, and many of us greatly appreciate it. But you've gotta admit, your job would be a lot tougher if anyone at the RIAA or MediaSentry had a technological clue or, heaven forbid, any actual evidence.
I tried to RTFA but all I get is a blank page.
Did TFA also mention the fact that the case was dropped because the next step was a jury trial and the RIAA had no evidence? Did it also mention that "the lady" was a case manager for the DOJ and knows exactly what is involved in proving the kind of action she filed?
The RIAA is going to get nailed to the wall by Tanya Andersen and I, for one, will laugh mockingly at the rotting corpse.
And he admits complete guilt.
Really? Where did he get a copy before it even hit theatres? George Lucas sent him a preview DVD? Complete guilt is rightfully assigned to the person that smuggled the copy out of the studio. This guy is just the pigeon taking the rap so that the inside man can keep his job and get access to more films.
I have purchased hundreds and hundreds of music CD's over the years. I have quit. After hearing what the RIAA was doing, I could no longer support such a company. How can you quantify that affect?
The RIAA counts all those CDs you (and I) used to buy as lost sales and blames it on P2P. In my case, I've stopped buying major label music mostly because of the lawsuits, but also because I simply do not hear any new music. The radio isn't playing anything new and it definitely isn't playing anything that doesn't belong to the cartel.
But if you think about it, the mergers and consolidation over the last seven years has released probably a third of the acts from their contracts. The underachievers, like Van Morrison. The future of music looks good, as soon as the RIAA dies.
Of course, any p2p discussion is not complete without the reminder that after 20,000 lawsuits, they have yet to prove their case in court. Every case that comes close to a trial is dropped because they have NO evidence. Just silly theories based on half-truths.
Which is what I'd call this "music piracy study". A silly theory based on half-truths.
Is the entire basis of the RIAA claims in all of these cases striking anyone else as being entirely based on "it may have been" scenarios being used as proof?
Each and every link in their "evidence" is based on assumptions, not fact.
Apparently ignorant about wireless, routers, and subnets, their arguments take the erroneous position that every IP address points to a unique computer at a given moment. And that they know who was standing in front of it. Even if they were already dead.
That's why everyone who says "Prove it" wins in the long run.
The RIAA train hasn't derailed.
Really? Did they take someone to trial and win today?
The function of the lawsuits isn't to make money. The goal is to scare people away from file sharing and back into the music store, either bricks and mortar or online.
They're doing a bang-up job there, too. Tower Records says "Thanks" for the extra traffic.