The only problem with the Trusonic side of the story is that they are claiming to have acquired the licensing for 250,000 artists -- exactly what we were told two months ago was the headcount for all of the mp3.com archive.
And the million and a half songs is a half million MORE than the figure being bandied about prior to mp3.com's demise.
Somehow, they got them all. And Vivendi mysteriously feels as if they suddenly possess infinite licenses for all of those songs, despite the fact that assignation of license is certainly not mentioned in the mp3 Terms of Service Agreement.
I think this just means that in the online sales area (particularly MusicMatch and PressPlay), the majors aren't dominating the market.
In fact, since no one is using their services, it's really hard to thump them too hard over it.
That doesn't mean they're still not a monopoly, pigopoly or whatever. It just means that in the narrow scope of a particular line of questioning the DOJ started looking at two and a half years ago, they're clean.
A formula for success. Yes, there it is, the holy grail of the music industry.
But hey, when you believe in copy-protection, I guess all things are possible, which is why I expect the major labels to put this into full production almost immediately.
You know, it's absolutely amazing to me that George Martin managed to make anything out of the Beatles at all without your friend.
Imagine, thinking you could actually record an album with two 4-track tape recorders duct taped together. Damn amateurs.
It's not your gear, it's how you use it. You can't buy a hit album. You've gotta make it. And you certainly don't have to spend $10000 on foam to be able do it.
The last time I went to a studio, the engineers recording through an awesome studio console onto 2 inch tape, pulled it into ADAT, transferred it into ProTools...... and took it home to work on in their living room.
There are millions of uses for P2P beyond sharing inferior mp3 files. Science, medicine, education......and government.
What we need to eliminate are industry-paid representatives to the government (senators, legislature) and use P2P to allow the public to represent itself.
The other fad which needs to eliminated are music publishers.
If the United States would enforce its antitrust laws, you wouldn't even be talking about this. Worms, viruses, security holes -- all "bonus features" from the Windows OS.
We're basically making the same point from different directs, which was my intent.
1) an mp3 is NOT an exact duplicate of the commercial recording. I can borrow a book from the library, take it home and make a copy. No one is going to litigate against me unless I try to sell it for profit.
5) The RIAA and MPAA wrote the DMCA. Our political leaders enabled it. The copyright laws have been bastardized to serve the publishers instead of the authors.
6) Our political leaders are not to be trusted to do anything in the public interest. I have written to 99 out of 100 U.S. Senators, the president, the vice president and the Supreme Court, requested an antitrust suit from the Department of Justice, after determining that the FBI, my state's Attorney General's office, FCC, FTC, Library of Congress, Senate Small Business Committee, Senate Commerce Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Technology Committee have no interest whatsoever in halting the actions of the RIAA.
Haven't bought an RIAA CD for five years. Turned off the radio two years ago.
Voiced my opinion, long and loud, within direct hearing of Hilary Rosen, RIAA lawyers, the FCC, US Copyright Office, ASCAP, NARAS and Senator Coleman, not to mention the hallowed pages of slashdot.
No one listened until they starting suing 12-year-old girls.
Education will take years and the general public will simply ignore it. The system must be dismantled. Now. Completely. Irrevocably.
Save the education pages for a historical perspective, to explain to the next generation why we tore the industry down -- if anyone even cares in five years, which I sincerely doubt.
Yes, let's educate. Here are a few starting points.
1) Sharing copyrighted material is NOT theft. It is the principle on which the public library was founded.
2) The vast majority of the music released is created by independent artists, by an estimated ratio of about 13:1, most of which offer their music freely for download.
3) According to the U.S. Copyright Office, only the copyright owners have the ability to file claims of copyright infringement. Please note that this is not necessarily the artists, but almost always the major labels in the case of RIAA acts. Conversely, in the case of independent acts, it is almost always the artist and NOT a record label.
4) The authorized music released by the independents and the major label acts (live bootlegs, authorized by the bands for sharing -- see http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php) far outweighs the "illegal" music released by the recording industry. The RIAA and the media both refuse to acknowledge the authorized music.
5) The RIAA is the only group suing people for listening to music, a move elegantly timed to take emphasis from the widespread copy-protected CDs currently being introduced. Compared to suing 12-year-olds, it is certainly appears to be the lesser of two evils even though copy-protection will last much longer than the legal terrorism will be allowed to continue.
6) Only the music from the RIAA carries the threat of lawsuits. The rest of us don't have the time, money or energy to sue you and drag you through the press for liking our music.
In this thread, some of you have spoken about a Fight against the recording industry. Some of you have discussed your personal rights and freedoms, misuse of the law, RICO statutes, the definition of a copy, fair use, and a variety of other viable topics, including the issue of legal vs illegal, right vs. wrong. Then there are those who offer ways around the law, ways to still share music and avoid the RIAA.
You can all argue these points indefinitely, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They have broken the war into so many fronts, many of which are facades, in order to defuse the opposition and spread it over so many topics and skirmishes. It also allows them to focus on their main goal while everyone else tries to figure out the most important battle to fight.
There is only one way to kill the RIAA -- give them exactly what they've been asking for. But most Americans' personal credo of "I want more and I want it now!" stands directly in the way of the simple path to the end of this foreign terrorist organization which is firmly entrenched in our government.
Pull the plug.
Stop buying new music from RIAA labels. Stop sharing their music. Stop downloading it. Turn off the radio. Whenever a band shows up on TV, change the channel. Stay out of the record stores.
Do this and it will be over in a few months. You won't even know when new releases come out, so you'll have no reason to go looking for them, no reason to buy, no reason to even be interested.
They will lose the correlation between file sharing and CD sales, especially if sales and sharing drop significantly in tandem. It deflates all of their arguments while achieving the true goal of removing their ability to pay for litigation, which ain't cheap.
Drain their funds. Stop feeding their legal fund and motive. Pull the plug.
I figure that I already have enough music, legally purchased and in my possession, to listen to for another 4 decades, if necessary. I know I will never buy another CD as long as the RIAA continues to be allowed to monopolize the market for recorded music and engage in activities which should certainly be considered as terrorism.
No matter how they change the law, twist the law, distort the law and control the government, no one can force me to spend my money on, or even listen to, music released by the RIAA labels.
I stopped funding the RIAA more than a year ago. Were I inclined to support an artist, I would NOT buy their CD (provided I was even aware that one existed) but send them money via www.musiclink.com, which takes the labels out of the loop.
Germany basically adopted our Constitution and are actively protecting its values and the rights of its citizens while the US government is actively taking our rights away bit by bit.
While we allow the music police and now have the Patriot Act (which is the greatest move toward Big Brother ever conceived), Microsoft is in charge of national computer security (the closest human counterpart to Big Brither and the anti-Christ), the RAVE act (making the sale of water an indication of drug use), the upcoming Extasy legislation (designed to make dancing, music and public gatherings illegal) and monopolies rule the country, our German counterparts have thrown out Microsoft, are protecting privacy and adopting open source.
Why is it that Germany acts more and more like it is the United States every day, while the United States acts more and more like Nazi Germany?
Copyright is designed as an artificial and limited monopoly for the "artists and creators." It says nothing about the publishers and those who contracturally wrest control from them.
The slashdot crowd is more intelligent than most, so I'd like to help everyone understand the portions that aren't even present in the above article and are certainly a part of this story, as I have been talking to Ann Gabriel of the Webcaster Alliance on a regular basis lately.
This is not about the actual rate per song, although it is certainly an issue, as much as it is about the fact that the people who are forced to pay this rate are not given a chance to take part in the negotiations. This is in part to the prohibitive cost to enter into the negotiations, as anyone who wants to participate in the CARP hearings must bear the cost of the hearing itself, which consistently runs into more than a million dollars per hearing. The cost of the hearings is not determined until it is finished, and is calculated at the rate of $200 per hour for each of the lawyers on the panel.
The real issue is that the RIAA pre-negotiates with the major players, leaving them as the sole representative of, oh, everyone in control of the current music cartel. This means that they are colluding their copyright power to exclude others from negotiating.
In the Napster case, the federal judge found that the RIAA was a monopoly and was using collusion in a refusal to negotiate, which was the basis for David Boise's counter-suit and a blatant violation of the antitrust laws. In Napster, the judge decided that since Napster was "bad" first, the RIAA got away with it.
The webcasters consistently get told by the RIAA that they are playing too much independent music, in a manner that legally amounts to threats and bullying. Many webcasters have dropped major label music altogether.
The other issue is that the RIAA, through SoundExchange, which is basically an RIAA subsidiary, collects all the money for royalties. Since the independent artists are not part of the RIAA, we will never get paid our portion of rightfully earned royalties.
Additionally, the FTC has found the RIAA in violation of the antitrust laws several times in the past 12 months alone -- price-fixing seems to be the greatest consistently violated provision but one seldom spoken of violation was using the record clubs to avoid paying royalties to authors. Each time they get caught, they settle out of court, try to kick it under the rug and continue on their merry way.
The RIAA completely controls radio, the media, and is now trying exert its monopoly over the Internet. In the case of the Internet, the real problem is that the indies can use it, too.
Considering that the music industry sends out in excess of $4 billion annually in free physical goods (average over the past five years), you'd think that they would embrace the free promotional tool available. The problem for them is that the independents have access to it, too.
The entire idea behind calling downloaders pirates and making the false assertion that downloading copyrighted material is theft is to intentionally exclude the tens of thousands of us who WANT people to download and listen to our music.
It's not about those fractions of a penny per song. It's about the fact that less than 10 percent of the recorded music controls more than 90 percent of the market. The rest of us aren't allowed in.
We can reach a global audience without the record labels right now. That's why the RIAA is fighting so hard to criminalize P2P. Because then they own the entire market for recorded music and the only way to reach the public will be through a major label contract -- again.
The RIAA represents less than 10 percent of the artists and controls 90 percent of the market. mp3s are inferior copies of the original and, just as a Reader's Digest condensed book is not comparable to the original, should not be considered as a copy of a CD. It simply is not.
When you can download true 16 bit 44.1kHz CD quality files, then maybe things will be different. But you simply cannot download a complete album. If you're lucky, you get about 10 percent of the information.
How many times must people be reminded of this before they start to realize the truth -- you CANNOT download an entire CD over the Internet, unless you're downloading 30-50 MB songs. A 4 MB mp3 is not a CD track. Why is everyone trying to pretend like they are?
The majority of the independent artists in the world are trying desperately to get our music heard by any means necessary and not only give you permission to download our material, but would love you forever just for giving us a listen.
It is ridiculous that the RIAA is as successful as they are in propagating the idea that downloading is theft.
If the big boys are so worried about people listening to their music, maybe they should just stop recording it. True artists create because they are compelled to do so by their inner voice. If we make money, that's great. But a failure to reap a profit does not silence our voice.
We write music for others to hear it, not to protect it like a hoarded treasure.
Why have the major artists been paying the radio to play their songs for years? To get people to listen to their music so that, hopefully, the consumers will be inclined to buy a copy. Now that free promotion is available, suddenly they don't want anyone to hear it.
They aren't artists if they have taken that approach. I'm a recording artist and I do it because I have no choice. It's my art and I must produce music. Sure, it would be nice to be rich and famous, but that is not why I make music. I do it to express the emotions and feelings which cannot be released in any other manner.
If artists want to protect their "intellectual property" then they should leave it locked up in their head. And if the overwhelming reason for creating music is to make money instead of fans, well, we're better off without them anyway.
The biggest issue is that the overwhelming minority completely controls the market, or at least they did until P2P came along. All of the fight is because they want control back.
If they stop P2P and criminalize the Internet, then the only way for the artists to reach the consumer is through the record labels. Again.
The copyright laws are designed to "promote the useful arts and sciences" and offer a limited monopoly to the "authors and creators." It says nothing about the greed merchants who have wrested control of copyrights from the authors and creators.
The copyright laws were NOT designed to protect the publishers. That's who the "intellectual property owners" are, not the authors, who have been getting financially raped since the dawn of the recording industry.
Radio is dead. The Internet is the last available promotional opportunity for independent artists and people are blindly using the copyright "infringement" propaganda to try and take it away from us.
Visit www.fairforshare.com, www.dmusic.com, www.garageband.com, www.vitaminic.com and www.iuma.com and you'll find that there are tens of thousands of us willing to let everyone in the world listen for free. We'll also sell you real CDs, not inferior mp3 copies.
The RIAA only represents a small fraction of the recording industry and it is not necessarily the best portion, simply the best financed. The talent is not as scarce as you may think.
But a realistic look at the industry and the copyright laws seems to be miniscule.
Since Microsoft just announced the desire to have software update itself automatically (and self-install the latest version of bugs and crappy security), all the PC users should get used to it.
They were, after all the ones who came up with the idea of "reaching into your computer" in the first place.
Between Microsoft, the RIAA and MPAA, we're getting to watch the real life version of Fahrenheit 45i, 1984 and Animal Farm all rolled into one neat package. It's called the DMCA (Despicable Microsoft Controls America?)
Judging from the RIAA statistics, which are questionable at best and seem intentionally deceptive, it would appear that the industry ships out an average of $4 billion annually in physical goods that is never sold nor returned.
My primary question is to ask why the mp3 file is not acknowledged as the inferior product which it is and used to replace this pricey "free goods" handout.
If allowed a follow-up, it is simply to ask why the industry refuses to acknowledge the wealth of freely available material on the web, placed there by the independents for the purpose of promotion. Even all the majors I have spoken with will tell you that if there were some way to discern the authorized downloads they would have little problem with the filesharing. No objection to sharing the same songs they want to push on the radio anyway.
What's the real motive behind wanting to totally control the Internet? Wait a minute. That's not a question. It's the answer. The RIAA wants it all and they're trying to shut the independents out so that they are the only door to the marketplace.
This isn't about the money -- it's about the power to control the entire market for recorded music. THAT is why the authorized files for sharing are not acknowledged.
The better argument here is that what the RIAA is attempting to do is STIFLE the development of P2P, an area of computer science of which the true benefits are still not explored. Additionally, the copyright law secures rights to the authors and creators.
It says nothing about the publishers or those who acquire the works of the authors and tests of early English Common Law (on which our copyright law is based) specifically DENIED publishers the ridiculous overreach of "intellectual property rights" that the RIAA now claims. They are guaranteed nothing by copyright law, as they are neither the author nor creator. Once the author has released control of their work, the copyright law should no longer apply.
From the majority of posts here, everyone seems to have forgotten that copyright laws were designed to protect the authors and creators NOT the "copyright owners" or (the new oxymoron for the 21st century) "intellectual property owners."
All of the squealing on behalf of the poor creators and authors and how file sharing is hurting them is misguided drivel. If it's available on the commercial market, the author has already sold their right to the work.
The copyright should end once the author has lost control of the work -- as in virtually every recording contract existing today.
The laws were designed to protect the authors -- not the publishers. The RIAA is the publishers. The software companies are the publishers. None of the creators owns their rights any longer.
Therefore, most of this discussion is so far off base that it is all irrelevant.
I know, this will get a flamebait modifier, but I don't care. Copyright has been twisted so severely that even those who are staunchly defending it are still arguing against the basic principle upon which the copyright laws were founded.
All the legal antics miss the real point. It's the authors, dammit. In today's system, they get screwed, regardless.
Slashdot Mirror
The only problem with the Trusonic side of the story is that they are claiming to have acquired the licensing for 250,000 artists -- exactly what we were told two months ago was the headcount for all of the mp3.com archive.
And the million and a half songs is a half million MORE than the figure being bandied about prior to mp3.com's demise.
Somehow, they got them all. And Vivendi mysteriously feels as if they suddenly possess infinite licenses for all of those songs, despite the fact that assignation of license is certainly not mentioned in the mp3 Terms of Service Agreement.
The RIAA is producing a commercial product. They pay per copy of the song manufactured for sale. Pure and simple.
If you buy a CD, then make a copy for your personal use (using the original as a backup), no sale has taken place and theoretically none will.
Funny how they could catch one guy, but 12 generations of Nigerians with multi-million dollar treasures are untraceable.
Albums on this list I own:
None
Albums on this list I will own:
None
Songs from these albums I will download:
None
Interest in supporting the RIAA: Less than zero.
I think this just means that in the online sales area (particularly MusicMatch and PressPlay), the majors aren't dominating the market.
In fact, since no one is using their services, it's really hard to thump them too hard over it.
That doesn't mean they're still not a monopoly, pigopoly or whatever. It just means that in the narrow scope of a particular line of questioning the DOJ started looking at two and a half years ago, they're clean.
Why waste time reviewing any RIAA DRM infected crap?
DRM == Doesn't Resemble Music.
mp3 is the only way to go. No "fingerprints", no AAC, certainly no WMF.
Besides, 60 million people have already decided. That's why I put all of my band's new music on Kazaa and LimeWire.
Especially considering that Arizona schools are at the bottom of the country in terms of actually teaching children.
Let's waste more money! And give that administrator a raise, dammit!
A formula for success. Yes, there it is, the holy grail of the music industry.
But hey, when you believe in copy-protection, I guess all things are possible, which is why I expect the major labels to put this into full production almost immediately.
Let's see... how did Loretta Lynn make it in the first place? She drove around to radio stations and talked then into playing her record.
In today's world, she wouldn't get in Clear Channel's front door.
You know, it's absolutely amazing to me that George Martin managed to make anything out of the Beatles at all without your friend.
... and took it home to work on in their living room.
Imagine, thinking you could actually record an album with two 4-track tape recorders duct taped together. Damn amateurs.
It's not your gear, it's how you use it. You can't buy a hit album. You've gotta make it. And you certainly don't have to spend $10000 on foam to be able do it.
The last time I went to a studio, the engineers recording through an awesome studio console onto 2 inch tape, pulled it into ADAT, transferred it into ProTools...
If this is a competition to see who can think up the stupidest lawsuits, this one isn't even close to the RIAA suing its own fans.
False advertising is what our economy is built on. Misrepresentation is the foundation of our entire government.
Too many lawyers and not enough teachers.
There are millions of uses for P2P beyond sharing inferior mp3 files. Science, medicine, education... ...and government.
What we need to eliminate are industry-paid representatives to the government (senators, legislature) and use P2P to allow the public to represent itself.
The other fad which needs to eliminated are music publishers.
If the United States would enforce its antitrust laws, you wouldn't even be talking about this. Worms, viruses, security holes -- all "bonus features" from the Windows OS.
We're basically making the same point from different directs, which was my intent.
1) an mp3 is NOT an exact duplicate of the commercial recording. I can borrow a book from the library, take it home and make a copy. No one is going to litigate against me unless I try to sell it for profit.
5) The RIAA and MPAA wrote the DMCA. Our political leaders enabled it. The copyright laws have been bastardized to serve the publishers instead of the authors.
6) Our political leaders are not to be trusted to do anything in the public interest. I have written to 99 out of 100 U.S. Senators, the president, the vice president and the Supreme Court, requested an antitrust suit from the Department of Justice, after determining that the FBI, my state's Attorney General's office, FCC, FTC, Library of Congress, Senate Small Business Committee, Senate Commerce Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Technology Committee have no interest whatsoever in halting the actions of the RIAA.
Haven't bought an RIAA CD for five years. Turned off the radio two years ago.
Voiced my opinion, long and loud, within direct hearing of Hilary Rosen, RIAA lawyers, the FCC, US Copyright Office, ASCAP, NARAS and Senator Coleman, not to mention the hallowed pages of slashdot.
No one listened until they starting suing 12-year-old girls.
Education will take years and the general public will simply ignore it. The system must be dismantled. Now. Completely. Irrevocably.
Save the education pages for a historical perspective, to explain to the next generation why we tore the industry down -- if anyone even cares in five years, which I sincerely doubt.
Yes, let's educate. Here are a few starting points.
1) Sharing copyrighted material is NOT theft. It is the principle on which the public library was founded.
2) The vast majority of the music released is created by independent artists, by an estimated ratio of about 13:1, most of which offer their music freely for download.
3) According to the U.S. Copyright Office, only the copyright owners have the ability to file claims of copyright infringement. Please note that this is not necessarily the artists, but almost always the major labels in the case of RIAA acts. Conversely, in the case of independent acts, it is almost always the artist and NOT a record label.
4) The authorized music released by the independents and the major label acts (live bootlegs, authorized by the bands for sharing -- see http://www.archive.org/audio/etree.php) far outweighs the "illegal" music released by the recording industry. The RIAA and the media both refuse to acknowledge the authorized music.
5) The RIAA is the only group suing people for listening to music, a move elegantly timed to take emphasis from the widespread copy-protected CDs currently being introduced. Compared to suing 12-year-olds, it is certainly appears to be the lesser of two evils even though copy-protection will last much longer than the legal terrorism will be allowed to continue.
6) Only the music from the RIAA carries the threat of lawsuits. The rest of us don't have the time, money or energy to sue you and drag you through the press for liking our music.
In this thread, some of you have spoken about a Fight against the recording industry. Some of you have discussed your personal rights and freedoms, misuse of the law, RICO statutes, the definition of a copy, fair use, and a variety of other viable topics, including the issue of legal vs illegal, right vs. wrong. Then there are those who offer ways around the law, ways to still share music and avoid the RIAA.
You can all argue these points indefinitely, which is exactly what the RIAA wants. They have broken the war into so many fronts, many of which are facades, in order to defuse the opposition and spread it over so many topics and skirmishes. It also allows them to focus on their main goal while everyone else tries to figure out the most important battle to fight.
There is only one way to kill the RIAA -- give them exactly what they've been asking for. But most Americans' personal credo of "I want more and I want it now!" stands directly in the way of the simple path to the end of this foreign terrorist organization which is firmly entrenched in our government.
Pull the plug.
Stop buying new music from RIAA labels. Stop sharing their music. Stop downloading it. Turn off the radio. Whenever a band shows up on TV, change the channel. Stay out of the record stores.
Do this and it will be over in a few months. You won't even know when new releases come out, so you'll have no reason to go looking for them, no reason to buy, no reason to even be interested.
They will lose the correlation between file sharing and CD sales, especially if sales and sharing drop significantly in tandem. It deflates all of their arguments while achieving the true goal of removing their ability to pay for litigation, which ain't cheap.
Drain their funds. Stop feeding their legal fund and motive. Pull the plug.
I figure that I already have enough music, legally purchased and in my possession, to listen to for another 4 decades, if necessary. I know I will never buy another CD as long as the RIAA continues to be allowed to monopolize the market for recorded music and engage in activities which should certainly be considered as terrorism.
No matter how they change the law, twist the law, distort the law and control the government, no one can force me to spend my money on, or even listen to, music released by the RIAA labels.
I stopped funding the RIAA more than a year ago. Were I inclined to support an artist, I would NOT buy their CD (provided I was even aware that one existed) but send them money via www.musiclink.com, which takes the labels out of the loop.
Pull the Plug and the Music Cartel dies.
Germany basically adopted our Constitution and are actively protecting its values and the rights of its citizens while the US government is actively taking our rights away bit by bit.
While we allow the music police and now have the Patriot Act (which is the greatest move toward Big Brother ever conceived), Microsoft is in charge of national computer security (the closest human counterpart to Big Brither and the anti-Christ), the RAVE act (making the sale of water an indication of drug use), the upcoming Extasy legislation (designed to make dancing, music and public gatherings illegal) and monopolies rule the country, our German counterparts have thrown out Microsoft, are protecting privacy and adopting open source.
Why is it that Germany acts more and more like it is the United States every day, while the United States acts more and more like Nazi Germany?
Copyright is designed as an artificial and limited monopoly for the "artists and creators." It says nothing about the publishers and those who contracturally wrest control from them.
The slashdot crowd is more intelligent than most, so I'd like to help everyone understand the portions that aren't even present in the above article and are certainly a part of this story, as I have been talking to Ann Gabriel of the Webcaster Alliance on a regular basis lately.
This is not about the actual rate per song, although it is certainly an issue, as much as it is about the fact that the people who are forced to pay this rate are not given a chance to take part in the negotiations. This is in part to the prohibitive cost to enter into the negotiations, as anyone who wants to participate in the CARP hearings must bear the cost of the hearing itself, which consistently runs into more than a million dollars per hearing. The cost of the hearings is not determined until it is finished, and is calculated at the rate of $200 per hour for each of the lawyers on the panel.
The real issue is that the RIAA pre-negotiates with the major players, leaving them as the sole representative of, oh, everyone in control of the current music cartel. This means that they are colluding their copyright power to exclude others from negotiating.
In the Napster case, the federal judge found that the RIAA was a monopoly and was using collusion in a refusal to negotiate, which was the basis for David Boise's counter-suit and a blatant violation of the antitrust laws. In Napster, the judge decided that since Napster was "bad" first, the RIAA got away with it.
The webcasters consistently get told by the RIAA that they are playing too much independent music, in a manner that legally amounts to threats and bullying. Many webcasters have dropped major label music altogether.
The other issue is that the RIAA, through SoundExchange, which is basically an RIAA subsidiary, collects all the money for royalties. Since the independent artists are not part of the RIAA, we will never get paid our portion of rightfully earned royalties.
Additionally, the FTC has found the RIAA in violation of the antitrust laws several times in the past 12 months alone -- price-fixing seems to be the greatest consistently violated provision but one seldom spoken of violation was using the record clubs to avoid paying royalties to authors. Each time they get caught, they settle out of court, try to kick it under the rug and continue on their merry way.
The RIAA completely controls radio, the media, and is now trying exert its monopoly over the Internet. In the case of the Internet, the real problem is that the indies can use it, too.
Considering that the music industry sends out in excess of $4 billion annually in free physical goods (average over the past five years), you'd think that they would embrace the free promotional tool available. The problem for them is that the independents have access to it, too.
The entire idea behind calling downloaders pirates and making the false assertion that downloading copyrighted material is theft is to intentionally exclude the tens of thousands of us who WANT people to download and listen to our music.
It's not about those fractions of a penny per song. It's about the fact that less than 10 percent of the recorded music controls more than 90 percent of the market. The rest of us aren't allowed in.
We can reach a global audience without the record labels right now. That's why the RIAA is fighting so hard to criminalize P2P. Because then they own the entire market for recorded music and the only way to reach the public will be through a major label contract -- again.
Antitrust is the ONLY way to stop the RIAA.
The RIAA represents less than 10 percent of the artists and controls 90 percent of the market. mp3s are inferior copies of the original and, just as a Reader's Digest condensed book is not comparable to the original, should not be considered as a copy of a CD. It simply is not.
When you can download true 16 bit 44.1kHz CD quality files, then maybe things will be different. But you simply cannot download a complete album. If you're lucky, you get about 10 percent of the information.
How many times must people be reminded of this before they start to realize the truth -- you CANNOT download an entire CD over the Internet, unless you're downloading 30-50 MB songs. A 4 MB mp3 is not a CD track. Why is everyone trying to pretend like they are?
The majority of the independent artists in the world are trying desperately to get our music heard by any means necessary and not only give you permission to download our material, but would love you forever just for giving us a listen.
It is ridiculous that the RIAA is as successful as they are in propagating the idea that downloading is theft.
If the big boys are so worried about people listening to their music, maybe they should just stop recording it. True artists create because they are compelled to do so by their inner voice. If we make money, that's great. But a failure to reap a profit does not silence our voice.
We write music for others to hear it, not to protect it like a hoarded treasure.
Why have the major artists been paying the radio to play their songs for years? To get people to listen to their music so that, hopefully, the consumers will be inclined to buy a copy. Now that free promotion is available, suddenly they don't want anyone to hear it.
They aren't artists if they have taken that approach. I'm a recording artist and I do it because I have no choice. It's my art and I must produce music. Sure, it would be nice to be rich and famous, but that is not why I make music. I do it to express the emotions and feelings which cannot be released in any other manner.
If artists want to protect their "intellectual property" then they should leave it locked up in their head. And if the overwhelming reason for creating music is to make money instead of fans, well, we're better off without them anyway.
The biggest issue is that the overwhelming minority completely controls the market, or at least they did until P2P came along. All of the fight is because they want control back.
If they stop P2P and criminalize the Internet, then the only way for the artists to reach the consumer is through the record labels. Again.
The copyright laws are designed to "promote the useful arts and sciences" and offer a limited monopoly to the "authors and creators." It says nothing about the greed merchants who have wrested control of copyrights from the authors and creators.
The copyright laws were NOT designed to protect the publishers. That's who the "intellectual property owners" are, not the authors, who have been getting financially raped since the dawn of the recording industry.
Radio is dead. The Internet is the last available promotional opportunity for independent artists and people are blindly using the copyright "infringement" propaganda to try and take it away from us.
Visit www.fairforshare.com, www.dmusic.com, www.garageband.com, www.vitaminic.com and www.iuma.com and you'll find that there are tens of thousands of us willing to let everyone in the world listen for free. We'll also sell you real CDs, not inferior mp3 copies.
The RIAA only represents a small fraction of the recording industry and it is not necessarily the best portion, simply the best financed. The talent is not as scarce as you may think.
But a realistic look at the industry and the copyright laws seems to be miniscule.
Fortunately, this all begins to change today.
Since Microsoft just announced the desire to have software update itself automatically (and self-install the latest version of bugs and crappy security), all the PC users should get used to it.
They were, after all the ones who came up with the idea of "reaching into your computer" in the first place.
Between Microsoft, the RIAA and MPAA, we're getting to watch the real life version of Fahrenheit 45i, 1984 and Animal Farm all rolled into one neat package. It's called the DMCA (Despicable Microsoft Controls America?)
Judging from the RIAA statistics, which are questionable at best and seem intentionally deceptive, it would appear that the industry ships out an average of $4 billion annually in physical goods that is never sold nor returned.
My primary question is to ask why the mp3 file is not acknowledged as the inferior product which it is and used to replace this pricey "free goods" handout.
If allowed a follow-up, it is simply to ask why the industry refuses to acknowledge the wealth of freely available material on the web, placed there by the independents for the purpose of promotion. Even all the majors I have spoken with will tell you that if there were some way to discern the authorized downloads they would have little problem with the filesharing. No objection to sharing the same songs they want to push on the radio anyway.
What's the real motive behind wanting to totally control the Internet? Wait a minute. That's not a question. It's the answer. The RIAA wants it all and they're trying to shut the independents out so that they are the only door to the marketplace.
This isn't about the money -- it's about the power to control the entire market for recorded music. THAT is why the authorized files for sharing are not acknowledged.
It says nothing about the publishers or those who acquire the works of the authors and tests of early English Common Law (on which our copyright law is based) specifically DENIED publishers the ridiculous overreach of "intellectual property rights" that the RIAA now claims. They are guaranteed nothing by copyright law, as they are neither the author nor creator. Once the author has released control of their work, the copyright law should no longer apply.
Oh, I'm scared.
Shut it down, just the same way we keep the RIAA in Internet limbo. The MPAA is no brighter than the RIAA.
They can't beat us. The needs of the many outweigh the greed of the few.
From the majority of posts here, everyone seems to have forgotten that copyright laws were designed to protect the authors and creators NOT the "copyright owners" or (the new oxymoron for the 21st century) "intellectual property owners."
All of the squealing on behalf of the poor creators and authors and how file sharing is hurting them is misguided drivel. If it's available on the commercial market, the author has already sold their right to the work.
The copyright should end once the author has lost control of the work -- as in virtually every recording contract existing today.
The laws were designed to protect the authors -- not the publishers. The RIAA is the publishers. The software companies are the publishers. None of the creators owns their rights any longer.
Therefore, most of this discussion is so far off base that it is all irrelevant.
I know, this will get a flamebait modifier, but I don't care. Copyright has been twisted so severely that even those who are staunchly defending it are still arguing against the basic principle upon which the copyright laws were founded.
All the legal antics miss the real point. It's the authors, dammit. In today's system, they get screwed, regardless.