I am no government scholar, but I was under the distinct impression that legislation was required to be made public.
And spoil the whole Kafkaesque plan they have? Arrest (or fine) people for violating a law that they aren't allow to know about. It's like they're trying to do a real-life mash-up of Orwell's 1984, Kafka's The Trial and Heinlein's Fahrenheit 451.
Seriously, though, I suppose this is why the RIAA's lobbying expenses more than tripled last year (compared to any other year since 1998) and are going to be right up there again this year. (Source: opensecrets.org)
Indies couldn't get music in the iTMS for the first two or three years, either. The "new" MySpace Music will not be allowing "amateurs," and a similar policy will be in place when (if) Vevo arrives.
I wonder if Apple is charging the labels $10,000 per album, too. As an independent artist, I would have no problem waiting a year or two for the open format if it meant that the RIAA members were getting soaked for 10 grand per record in the meantime.
I'm actually surprised it's only 41% pirated software...
So am I, since they're probably pulling the numbers out of their ass anyway.
If you RTFA, there is a handy graphic which shows that the U.S. "piracy" rate is closer to 18%, the lowest of any country on the chart.
What's missing is any explanation of how they arrived at the percentages. I know that when the RIAA was releasing "piracy" numbers, they counted a label as a CD, and counted a 4x CD burner as four burners. Without seeing how the percentages were arrived at, this "report" (or at least what we're allowed to see of it) cannot be accepted as fact. This is why teachers make schoolchildren show their work in math class.
In addition to not showing their work, we have to take into consideration the previous intentional disinformation from the Fearless Pirate Hunters. As such, without additional information there's no good reason to take this "report" too seriously, much less its conclusions.
It's not just Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. Every Native American Indian tribe in the country has the right to open casinos and judging from the states I've been in recently, it's happening everywhere. Every one of them is loaded with slots and table games. And none of them are run by anyone named Guido.
The Majors are required by law to care only about shareholder profits.
While this may be the case (I thought Warner Music was privately held), looking at the industry sales for the past ten years, it's difficult to see any evidence of this taking place.
For almost the entire decade, the industry has been on a campaign to alienate listeners and deprive them of any outlet to find new music without paying for it first. Did those 40,000 lawsuits do anything for the bottom line? Not having caused enough damage yet, now they're going to piss off the artists as well, further reducing the number of intelligent people willing to do business with them.
Not that I have a problem with that...
If the majors don't "promote art, make music, and support artists," then there is no compelling reason to expect they will ever be profitable again. These things they are not supposed to care about are the foundations on which the industry's earlier success was built. Abandoning them in favor of meeting short-term accounting goals almost guarantees long-term failure.
They have a "fiduciary responsibility"? They've already lost 2/3 of their sales. When does that start? When they hit bankruptcy?
Since Microsoft is the world's largest software company, wouldn't the best course of action be to simply make software that doesn't require constant security updates?
I had mod points today (still have 'em). Went through this story at -1, read everything carefully before I added my mods. After having taken the effort to read all the opinions and comments, when I got to the end, I had to log out without actually moderating anything. There's something which no one has pointed out and seems to contradict the majority of justifications for the march of the storm troopers (although there is no possible justification for trapping college kids in a stairwell to tear gas them).
I clicked on the link to this story just to find out what "legal group" was still taking such a small-minded and ignorant point of view.
Hiring mercenary lawyers to fight the rise of technology with scripted Orwellian doublespeak does not constitute a "legal group."
If anything, this is like watching the MAFIAA play a game of Risk. They tried to get North America first, and failed miserably. Europe has too many different fronts, Asia is too large, the Middle East and Africa are too unstable to get a foothold. This leaves South America and Australia.
If you can't maintain control of Australia, all your plans for world domination are a joke to everyone else playing the game.
But you are one if you decide that your preference is the universally best one, and that not choosing as you do reflects negatively on the character of others.
Again, I can agree with you on this. I'm not trying to be a troll. My guitarist is a stockbroker. He uses Windows because it's the best way to go for that job. I don't think less of him for it. It has nothing to do with his character.
I just don't know what a "Mac person" is.
If I were going to be a smart-ass, my answer would be, "Well, there you go..." But it goes to understanding my statement about it being no great loss for those who are snatched by MS.
I was dragged into using Macs while employed at a newspaper, where we had been sending stories to a Compugraphic typesetting machine, using markup language similar to html, in a primitive sort of way. At the time, the reason we were given was typography and accurate onscreen rendering of graphics and page layout. Compared to Macs, Windows type simply looked like crap.
The second most important issue was that Macs could recognize and read most Windows files, but Windows couldn't read Mac files. Incompatibility was not an option, as our information was accumulated from several sources (but we never could help anyone out that had the large-size floppy disks).
Eventually, I became a Mac person, but not right away, even though we saved 6 hours the first week.
A Mac person is someone who can explain honestly, sincerely and succinctly why they would never consider using anything else. It has nothing to do with you or my opinion of your standing. It's not the same as being a fanboy, which is just cheerleading. A Mac person would rather not argue about the OS choice either, but we think Microsoft is inept. We find that funny and are compelled to laugh at it, which is exactly what we would do if they asked us to work for them.
Old enough to remember Grandpa McCoy's (Walter Brennan) catchphrase? -- "No brag, just fact..."
The Mac I'm using right this minute was purchased in 1998. Haven't had to re-install the system for years. No component failures. I take it places to record music, set it up, tear it down, go somewhere else to do vocals, set it up, tear it down, throw it in the back seat. It's like the freakin' Energizer bunny. My Windows-using friends have gone through at least four PCs, some (the gamers) as many as six. Add in the cost of security issues, viruses and wasted time in service of the system software instead of the task at hand and, over the long haul, I just can't afford to use anything but a Mac.
Maybe saying I'm a Mac person is merely a reflection of my thinking process and how I approach problem-solving and creativity. Windows always makes me feel like the machine is in charge of what I can or can't do and what format I can do it in. I can use Windows, but I don't "get" it; everything seems unnecessarily complicated. It always seems to get in the way of capturing creativity while you stop and try to figure out why your computer is not cooperating, whereas the Mac always seems to enable the creative process
But that's just my opinion.
That's kind of intangible, but it's the most important thing other than the price. Sometimes, more important.
Are blog drooling morons not aware that patents take YEARS to go from filing to accept to grant?
That's kind of beside the point. Doesn't matter how long it took them to get it, and the more time and expense that was required make it all that much more ridiculous.
Microsoft has the patent to DRM for p2p. DRM does not work unless you use a proprietary format. P2P is not a proprietary format. The exchange of files is the function of the Internet or even an internal network at its most basic levels. A patent does not give them the ability to change the laws of physics.
On the other hand, as long as M$ holds the patent to this incredibly lame idea, no one else will waste their time trying to do it.
I personally find any level of OS elitism to be a rather depressing sentiment on the behalf of the person expressing it.
What if you just like one of them more than the others because it works best for the tasks you're asking it to do? Otherwise, why would you have a Mac, Ubuntu and Windows? They all have their strengths and weaknesses. For other people, their preference is a reflection of their environment -- it's the only thing they've ever used, because that's what they use at work.
I have a distinct preference, with a boatload of reasons why. We have a story here about MS trying to steal Apple's staff. As a result, my preferences color my perception of the story.
I'm getting tired of being called an elitist just to deflect criticism. The computer realm seems almost as bad as the political one. Am I an elitist because I prefer a Les Paul over a Strat? Or a Harley over a Suzuki? Chevy Truck over a Dodge?
The facts are that almost everything Microsoft sells was a stolen idea in the first place that they didn't get quite right, so this is just a natural continuation of a 25-year practice. I'd be willing to bet that the Guru Bar is going to spend the majority of its time doing security patches and re-installed trashed systems. Over, and over and over...
Any Apple employees Microsoft can steal aren't Mac people in the first place, so it's no great loss to the Genius Bar. That may sound elitist, but if you go to a Harley shop, you expect to find someone who knows something about Harleys -- and you don't expect him to show up riding a Vespa.
Newspapers sell one thing and one thing only -- advertising. The amount of advertising in any particular issue determines how much room there is for content. The best ratio you'll find is about 50/50, but that's rare. 60/40 and 70/30 are more common, with content always getting the lesser portion. Any pre-printed ads from grocery stores or department/specialty stores that are inserted to be distributed with the paper do not count toward the calculation.
The content is seldom important to advertisers unless it is about them.
Even blockbuster movies like Star Wars or Indiana Jones become "unpurchasable" in a relatively short amount of time...
This is artificial scarcity. They are only unpurchasable because the long tail isn't profitable enough for the big studios, who will stop making copies as soon as they can't sell a boatload of them anymore.
Disney has the best handle on it because they republish back catalog in a big way every 10 years or so... making it "new" again to a new group of people.
Disney is the worst manipulator of artificial scarcity. The only reason they republish "in a big way," is because they take their stuff off the market in an equally big way. There is a new crop of five-year-olds every year. You don't have to make Snow White or Pinocchio "new" again to please them.
The 10-year cycle (or whatever the actual length is -- I think it's longer) is designed to make sure new parents don't have a copy of whatever Disney is re-releasing when they start an advertising campaign to make their kids ask for it.
How do you do that for general things like "Bing Crosby" movies or "Rogers and Hammerstein" musicals?
The same kind of advertising budget might be able to do it (although as a kid, being forced to watching Rogers and Hammerstein musicals when they were new seemed like punishment). It would seem that re-releasing and injecting an advertising campaign brings the work back to the front of the line (or at least attempts to). That means it's no longer part of the long tail, which should (theoretically) work without it.
But with the exclusivity, you give Google a monopoly over out-of-print books.
We're talking about works that the publishers had decided to let die. The copyrights are still in force, but there are not enough sales to justify printing another copy. As a result, they are not currently available at any price.
The damage to both the consumers and authors took place when the books were taken off the market. As long as they are both out of print and still protected by copyright, without an agreement such as this, we would be forced to wait 100 years or more before the works to fall into public domain and be available again.
Google may get a monopoly on them, but the bottom line is that the authors will start getting paid again while they are still alive, something which no one else was apparently offering to do. And the copyright owners can let anyone collectively manage their individual monopolies (copyrights) in any way they see fit.
Just because the agreement with Google didn't say that "any other company may also have the same rights under the same terms" does not constitute exclusivity. It would have to say that someone like Amazon (or your other examples) could not negotiate a similar deal. Exclusivity cannot be implied from what the agreement does not say.
Since they got on it first, I wouldn't think it out of line if Google did receive exclusivity for a certain number of years before the publishers opened it up to competition. This would let some sort of standard be worked out before people like Microsoft get in and start trying to bastardize it.
Overall, this is a good deal for consumers (who get access to "lost" works) and authors (the intended beneficiaries of copyright law). The DOJ is against it because it's filled with RIAA lawyers and the concept of paying the authors is foreign to them.
Your biases are often sent to the children even if you are not trying to do so.
While this is true, it is not the case here. The RIAA is making every effort to imprint their biases on the uninformed. They're telling kids that letting their friends listen to music is an offense. That's beyond bias; it's a flat-out lie.
Once again, the depth and breadth of the music industry's stupidity is simply astounding.
ASCAP does NOT represent "the majority of mainstream artists," just the songwriters and publishers. And how many songwriters/publishers belong to BMI? Are you sure ASCAP represents the majority?
Rock is still the highest selling genre overall, according to Nielsen. There are more than 2 million rock bands alone on MySpace -- and more rap/hip-hop acts than rock. That's the mainstream. Even if 360,000 was the number of acts signed up with ASCAP, it's nowhere near "the majority of mainstream artists."
Eventually they have enough money for the damage fees, and if not I'm sure lots of people would donate.
If they made a fraction of the money that they are accused of "stealing," they could cover the fine. And the quotes at the top of the page also attribute the prison sentence to the commercial profit as well.
But the Pirate Bay guys asked more than once, "Where is all this money?" They suggested they should file a complaint because someone had obviously stolen it from them.
I don't think they made any profit. They certainly didn't take any money from the record labels. But that's the only thing they're being punished for.
Even if TPB is gone forever, it's not going to put another dollar into the record labels' coffers. Thinking that this will somehow help the music industry is a delusion.
The Legend of the Rising Vinyl Sales is highly exaggerated.
1982 -- 250 million vinyl albums shipped by the RIAA 1985 -- 170 million vinyl albums 1990 -- 12 million vinyl albums 1993 -- 1.2 million 1998 -- 3.3 million 2001 -- 2.3 million 2005 -- 1 million 2007 -- 1.3 million 2008 -- 1.9 million -- (Nielsen Soundscan)
Granted, vinyl sales are up slightly, but it's a novelty.
Since when does commercial counterfeiting have anything to do with public policy surrounding P2P?
It has nothing at all to do with it. But, much like "downloading is theft," if they repeat this fabrication enough times, people will start to believe it.
If nothing else, it wastes their opponents's time while they stop to point out this is bullshit.
Even if they could get every patrons' ID for accurate seating charts of every showing of every film across the country (idea-stopping problem one), I would still be more than a little skeptical of such "evidence" were I on a jury.
Slashdot Mirror
I'm still trying to figure out how to divide a group of 16 people into thirds without staining the carpet.
They locked one guy in the bathroom.
I am no government scholar, but I was under the distinct impression that legislation was required to be made public.
And spoil the whole Kafkaesque plan they have? Arrest (or fine) people for violating a law that they aren't allow to know about. It's like they're trying to do a real-life mash-up of Orwell's 1984, Kafka's The Trial and Heinlein's Fahrenheit 451.
Seriously, though, I suppose this is why the RIAA's lobbying expenses more than tripled last year (compared to any other year since 1998) and are going to be right up there again this year. (Source: opensecrets.org)
Indies couldn't get music in the iTMS for the first two or three years, either. The "new" MySpace Music will not be allowing "amateurs," and a similar policy will be in place when (if) Vevo arrives.
I wonder if Apple is charging the labels $10,000 per album, too. As an independent artist, I would have no problem waiting a year or two for the open format if it meant that the RIAA members were getting soaked for 10 grand per record in the meantime.
I'm actually surprised it's only 41% pirated software...
So am I, since they're probably pulling the numbers out of their ass anyway.
If you RTFA, there is a handy graphic which shows that the U.S. "piracy" rate is closer to 18%, the lowest of any country on the chart.
What's missing is any explanation of how they arrived at the percentages. I know that when the RIAA was releasing "piracy" numbers, they counted a label as a CD, and counted a 4x CD burner as four burners. Without seeing how the percentages were arrived at, this "report" (or at least what we're allowed to see of it) cannot be accepted as fact. This is why teachers make schoolchildren show their work in math class.
In addition to not showing their work, we have to take into consideration the previous intentional disinformation from the Fearless Pirate Hunters. As such, without additional information there's no good reason to take this "report" too seriously, much less its conclusions.
It's not just Vegas, Reno and Atlantic City. Every Native American Indian tribe in the country has the right to open casinos and judging from the states I've been in recently, it's happening everywhere. Every one of them is loaded with slots and table games. And none of them are run by anyone named Guido.
The Majors are required by law to care only about shareholder profits.
While this may be the case (I thought Warner Music was privately held), looking at the industry sales for the past ten years, it's difficult to see any evidence of this taking place.
For almost the entire decade, the industry has been on a campaign to alienate listeners and deprive them of any outlet to find new music without paying for it first. Did those 40,000 lawsuits do anything for the bottom line? Not having caused enough damage yet, now they're going to piss off the artists as well, further reducing the number of intelligent people willing to do business with them.
Not that I have a problem with that...
If the majors don't "promote art, make music, and support artists," then there is no compelling reason to expect they will ever be profitable again. These things they are not supposed to care about are the foundations on which the industry's earlier success was built. Abandoning them in favor of meeting short-term accounting goals almost guarantees long-term failure.
They have a "fiduciary responsibility"? They've already lost 2/3 of their sales. When does that start? When they hit bankruptcy?
Since Microsoft is the world's largest software company, wouldn't the best course of action be to simply make software that doesn't require constant security updates?
It's not factually inaccurate. But it is worded so perfectly (and precisely) to be subconsciously misleading.
You're being wa-a-a-a-y too nice in your analysis.
I see the names of three singers. No musicians, though.
I had mod points today (still have 'em). Went through this story at -1, read everything carefully before I added my mods. After having taken the effort to read all the opinions and comments, when I got to the end, I had to log out without actually moderating anything. There's something which no one has pointed out and seems to contradict the majority of justifications for the march of the storm troopers (although there is no possible justification for trapping college kids in a stairwell to tear gas them).
It's a story in the New York Times. "Thousands Hold Peaceful March at G-20 Summit"
And there's a slide show, too (linked on the same page) -- "G20 Protest Turns Peaceful."
'Nuff said.
I clicked on the link to this story just to find out what "legal group" was still taking such a small-minded and ignorant point of view.
Hiring mercenary lawyers to fight the rise of technology with scripted Orwellian doublespeak does not constitute a "legal group."
If anything, this is like watching the MAFIAA play a game of Risk. They tried to get North America first, and failed miserably. Europe has too many different fronts, Asia is too large, the Middle East and Africa are too unstable to get a foothold. This leaves South America and Australia.
If you can't maintain control of Australia, all your plans for world domination are a joke to everyone else playing the game.
But you are one if you decide that your preference is the universally best one, and that not choosing as you do reflects negatively on the character of others.
Again, I can agree with you on this. I'm not trying to be a troll. My guitarist is a stockbroker. He uses Windows because it's the best way to go for that job. I don't think less of him for it. It has nothing to do with his character.
I just don't know what a "Mac person" is.
If I were going to be a smart-ass, my answer would be, "Well, there you go..." But it goes to understanding my statement about it being no great loss for those who are snatched by MS.
I was dragged into using Macs while employed at a newspaper, where we had been sending stories to a Compugraphic typesetting machine, using markup language similar to html, in a primitive sort of way. At the time, the reason we were given was typography and accurate onscreen rendering of graphics and page layout. Compared to Macs, Windows type simply looked like crap.
The second most important issue was that Macs could recognize and read most Windows files, but Windows couldn't read Mac files. Incompatibility was not an option, as our information was accumulated from several sources (but we never could help anyone out that had the large-size floppy disks).
Eventually, I became a Mac person, but not right away, even though we saved 6 hours the first week.
A Mac person is someone who can explain honestly, sincerely and succinctly why they would never consider using anything else. It has nothing to do with you or my opinion of your standing. It's not the same as being a fanboy, which is just cheerleading. A Mac person would rather not argue about the OS choice either, but we think Microsoft is inept. We find that funny and are compelled to laugh at it, which is exactly what we would do if they asked us to work for them.
Old enough to remember Grandpa McCoy's (Walter Brennan) catchphrase? -- "No brag, just fact..."
The Mac I'm using right this minute was purchased in 1998. Haven't had to re-install the system for years. No component failures. I take it places to record music, set it up, tear it down, go somewhere else to do vocals, set it up, tear it down, throw it in the back seat. It's like the freakin' Energizer bunny. My Windows-using friends have gone through at least four PCs, some (the gamers) as many as six. Add in the cost of security issues, viruses and wasted time in service of the system software instead of the task at hand and, over the long haul, I just can't afford to use anything but a Mac.
Maybe saying I'm a Mac person is merely a reflection of my thinking process and how I approach problem-solving and creativity. Windows always makes me feel like the machine is in charge of what I can or can't do and what format I can do it in. I can use Windows, but I don't "get" it; everything seems unnecessarily complicated. It always seems to get in the way of capturing creativity while you stop and try to figure out why your computer is not cooperating, whereas the Mac always seems to enable the creative process
But that's just my opinion.
That's kind of intangible, but it's the most important thing other than the price. Sometimes, more important.
Are blog drooling morons not aware that patents take YEARS to go from filing to accept to grant?
That's kind of beside the point. Doesn't matter how long it took them to get it, and the more time and expense that was required make it all that much more ridiculous.
Microsoft has the patent to DRM for p2p. DRM does not work unless you use a proprietary format. P2P is not a proprietary format. The exchange of files is the function of the Internet or even an internal network at its most basic levels. A patent does not give them the ability to change the laws of physics.
On the other hand, as long as M$ holds the patent to this incredibly lame idea, no one else will waste their time trying to do it.
It's a win-win situation.
I personally find any level of OS elitism to be a rather depressing sentiment on the behalf of the person expressing it.
What if you just like one of them more than the others because it works best for the tasks you're asking it to do? Otherwise, why would you have a Mac, Ubuntu and Windows? They all have their strengths and weaknesses. For other people, their preference is a reflection of their environment -- it's the only thing they've ever used, because that's what they use at work.
I have a distinct preference, with a boatload of reasons why. We have a story here about MS trying to steal Apple's staff. As a result, my preferences color my perception of the story.
I'm getting tired of being called an elitist just to deflect criticism. The computer realm seems almost as bad as the political one. Am I an elitist because I prefer a Les Paul over a Strat? Or a Harley over a Suzuki? Chevy Truck over a Dodge?
The facts are that almost everything Microsoft sells was a stolen idea in the first place that they didn't get quite right, so this is just a natural continuation of a 25-year practice. I'd be willing to bet that the Guru Bar is going to spend the majority of its time doing security patches and re-installed trashed systems. Over, and over and over...
Any Apple employees Microsoft can steal aren't Mac people in the first place, so it's no great loss to the Genius Bar. That may sound elitist, but if you go to a Harley shop, you expect to find someone who knows something about Harleys -- and you don't expect him to show up riding a Vespa.
Newspapers sell one thing and one thing only -- advertising. The amount of advertising in any particular issue determines how much room there is for content. The best ratio you'll find is about 50/50, but that's rare. 60/40 and 70/30 are more common, with content always getting the lesser portion. Any pre-printed ads from grocery stores or department/specialty stores that are inserted to be distributed with the paper do not count toward the calculation.
The content is seldom important to advertisers unless it is about them.
Even blockbuster movies like Star Wars or Indiana Jones become "unpurchasable" in a relatively short amount of time...
This is artificial scarcity. They are only unpurchasable because the long tail isn't profitable enough for the big studios, who will stop making copies as soon as they can't sell a boatload of them anymore.
Disney has the best handle on it because they republish back catalog in a big way every 10 years or so... making it "new" again to a new group of people.
Disney is the worst manipulator of artificial scarcity. The only reason they republish "in a big way," is because they take their stuff off the market in an equally big way. There is a new crop of five-year-olds every year. You don't have to make Snow White or Pinocchio "new" again to please them.
The 10-year cycle (or whatever the actual length is -- I think it's longer) is designed to make sure new parents don't have a copy of whatever Disney is re-releasing when they start an advertising campaign to make their kids ask for it.
How do you do that for general things like "Bing Crosby" movies or "Rogers and Hammerstein" musicals?
The same kind of advertising budget might be able to do it (although as a kid, being forced to watching Rogers and Hammerstein musicals when they were new seemed like punishment). It would seem that re-releasing and injecting an advertising campaign brings the work back to the front of the line (or at least attempts to). That means it's no longer part of the long tail, which should (theoretically) work without it.
But with the exclusivity, you give Google a monopoly over out-of-print books.
We're talking about works that the publishers had decided to let die. The copyrights are still in force, but there are not enough sales to justify printing another copy. As a result, they are not currently available at any price.
The damage to both the consumers and authors took place when the books were taken off the market. As long as they are both out of print and still protected by copyright, without an agreement such as this, we would be forced to wait 100 years or more before the works to fall into public domain and be available again.
Google may get a monopoly on them, but the bottom line is that the authors will start getting paid again while they are still alive, something which no one else was apparently offering to do. And the copyright owners can let anyone collectively manage their individual monopolies (copyrights) in any way they see fit.
Just because the agreement with Google didn't say that "any other company may also have the same rights under the same terms" does not constitute exclusivity. It would have to say that someone like Amazon (or your other examples) could not negotiate a similar deal. Exclusivity cannot be implied from what the agreement does not say.
Since they got on it first, I wouldn't think it out of line if Google did receive exclusivity for a certain number of years before the publishers opened it up to competition. This would let some sort of standard be worked out before people like Microsoft get in and start trying to bastardize it.
Overall, this is a good deal for consumers (who get access to "lost" works) and authors (the intended beneficiaries of copyright law). The DOJ is against it because it's filled with RIAA lawyers and the concept of paying the authors is foreign to them.
Your biases are often sent to the children even if you are not trying to do so.
While this is true, it is not the case here. The RIAA is making every effort to imprint their biases on the uninformed. They're telling kids that letting their friends listen to music is an offense. That's beyond bias; it's a flat-out lie.
Once again, the depth and breadth of the music industry's stupidity is simply astounding.
ASCAP does NOT represent "the majority of mainstream artists," just the songwriters and publishers. And how many songwriters/publishers belong to BMI? Are you sure ASCAP represents the majority?
Rock is still the highest selling genre overall, according to Nielsen. There are more than 2 million rock bands alone on MySpace -- and more rap/hip-hop acts than rock. That's the mainstream. Even if 360,000 was the number of acts signed up with ASCAP, it's nowhere near "the majority of mainstream artists."
Plagiarism and counterfeiting are the only things I'd ever heard of as copyright infringement before the RIAA started suing people.
"My Sweet Lord" vs. "He's So Fine," and John Fogerty vs. John Fogerty come to mind. There are many more.
Getting upset over a background image seems rather petty and insignificant.
Music *IS* industry.
That's exactly what's wrong with it.
But if you're against commercial music, the answer isn't to pirate it. Answer is not to listen to it all.
That's certainly good advice. Been following it since 2000. ...record labels aren't there just to rip people off.
Then why are they perpetually being audited by the artists? They're just really bad at math?
Artists actually need them.
Some artists need them. Most are better off without them.
Eventually they have enough money for the damage fees, and if not I'm sure lots of people would donate.
If they made a fraction of the money that they are accused of "stealing," they could cover the fine. And the quotes at the top of the page also attribute the prison sentence to the commercial profit as well.
But the Pirate Bay guys asked more than once, "Where is all this money?" They suggested they should file a complaint because someone had obviously stolen it from them.
I don't think they made any profit. They certainly didn't take any money from the record labels. But that's the only thing they're being punished for.
Even if TPB is gone forever, it's not going to put another dollar into the record labels' coffers. Thinking that this will somehow help the music industry is a delusion.
The Legend of the Rising Vinyl Sales is highly exaggerated.
1982 -- 250 million vinyl albums shipped by the RIAA
1985 -- 170 million vinyl albums
1990 -- 12 million vinyl albums
1993 -- 1.2 million
1998 -- 3.3 million
2001 -- 2.3 million
2005 -- 1 million
2007 -- 1.3 million
2008 -- 1.9 million -- (Nielsen Soundscan)
Granted, vinyl sales are up slightly, but it's a novelty.
Since when does commercial counterfeiting have anything to do with public policy surrounding P2P?
It has nothing at all to do with it. But, much like "downloading is theft," if they repeat this fabrication enough times, people will start to believe it.
If nothing else, it wastes their opponents's time while they stop to point out this is bullshit.
Even if they could get every patrons' ID for accurate seating charts of every showing of every film across the country (idea-stopping problem one), I would still be more than a little skeptical of such "evidence" were I on a jury.
In related news, Colorado reports epic crop of hallucinogenic mushrooms.