"The more people realize that the RIAA is trying to attack us doing the simple act of ripping CDs to MP3s, Joe Sixpack might actually give a second thought if he really wants/needs to spend the $15 to get a new CD."
This has already been covered endlessly. He isn't under scrutiny for simply ripping the CDs. The record companies claim that he does not have authorization to rip CDs for the purpose of placing them into his Kazaa share folder.
Those eleven words at the end of the sentence may seem inconsequential but they make all the difference. It may not make sense to some people, but in the eyes of the record industry, a ripped MP3 file goes from "authorized" to "unauthorized" when it's placed into your P2P share directory... even though it's the same file.
"While that might be true, I feel it's unfortunate that consumers are bearing the blunt of the bloat that exists in the record industry. It seems to me as if record industry executives are getting wealthy off of content that they, frankly, do not create. Having read about how the industry actually works, it strikes me as a system where everyone's taking a cut away from the artists, leaving the consumer to suffer due to higher prices. Is it unreasonable to hope that the industry can find a business model where artists can make more while consumers lose less?"
The big record labels will never be able to do it. The more overhead, the more hands there are grabbing at the money. I've met a few folks who've run indie labels who've told me that they pay their artists higher royalties than the big labels. So, artists can choose to sign with smaller labels and potentially get a larger piece of a smaller pie. Or, go the self-distribution route and get all of the pie... minus the part they have to give to the bank.
It's like that in any industry. Work for a big company and you'll just be a cog in a wheel -- you might have a higher level of job security and other benefits. But if you go to work for that startup, it might be a hell of a ride, but you'll have a bigger share of the company's success.
"So I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them -- do they really exist or are Slashbotters just making that number up to cement their idea that RIAA sponsored music is horrid (like we didn't know already)?"
I think you may have meant to reply to the GP, not my post (I, too, corrected the GP on his assertation that CDs are $18.99).
Disproving it is easy -- just browse the Amazon Top 100 or take a look at prices at a major retailer. I think that "CDs are $20" is just one of those curious Slashdot memes. It could be that CDs were probably around $20 when P2P exploded, so that's the price that many Slashdotters remember from that point when they stopped buying CDs and started using P2P to acquire their music. But, sadly, I think that there's some willful ignorance here in an effort to feed the "CDs are overpriced" zeitgeist. Acknowledging that we pirated when they were $20, we're still pirating when they're $10, and we'll keep pirating even when they're $5 just doesn't have that same whiff of righteousness and sanctity.
Sure, some CDs still sell for $18 - $20 -- audiophile-grade classical CDs, CDs bundled with concert DVDs, and the like -- but they're not the mainstream. The stuff that's pirated the most is the same pop crap that can be had for $8.99 at Amazon or Wal-Mart.
"CDs are overpriced. Here in Vancouver, CDs usually cost between $15.99 and $24.99. (Yes, you read that right. No, these are not special edition or imports.) If CDs sold for around $5, not as many people would bother illegally downloading music."
Yeah, Canadians get screwed at retail on a lot of things. Back when the Canadian dollar worth $0.80 US, US companies (including the ones I've worked for) would jack the Canadian retail prices up by 20% or so to accomodate. But now that the Canadian and US dollars are at parity, many companies (at least in the high tech industry) are still padding the Canadian retail prices, just because they figure Canadian customers are used to it.
Anyway, I'm sure your theory is correct, but maybe not to the degree you think. In the USA, CDs used to cost $18 - $20 about five years ago and people were claiming that if only the record companies reduced the prices, piracy wouldn't be a problem. Today, most new CDs are sold at $8 - $12, and people are still claiming that. Thus, I think that even if CDs hit $5, the hard-core pirates will still say that they'll get around to going legit when the price hits $3!
"Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap. (Now get off my lawn.)"
For me, pop music stopped being good around 1998. What year did it for you? Ask anybody and they'll give you a different answer. Everybody gets off that pop culture bus at some point. Most music has always sucked, despite the fact that the average guy on the street will swear that music was much, much better in $RAND_YEAR.
"Ya'd think they would drop the price to something reasonable, like $9.99. The cost of the disk is almost nothing."
As I covered in another post, the going rate for CDs is about $9.99. Prices have indeed dropped. They were in the $18 range about five years ago, but due to piracy, competition from other forms of entertainment, etc. etc. they've dropped significantly.
Despite material costs being below $1.50, it's still the case that record companies make pretty thin margins on CD sales relative to margins in other industries. I know this will probably boggle many people who read this, but there's a huge gulf between BOM cost and cost of sale. All of the record companies' expenses (salaries, promotions, overhead, etc. etc.) must come out of the sale of that CD. The biggest piece of the pie, believe it or not, is usually the royalties.
There are plenty of reasons to justify piracy. Actually, it's my long-held belief that you need no justification... if you'd rather have something for free than pay for it, then go for it. It's not like you need to make somebody else a bad guy to justify your actions. But "CDs cost $18" certainly isn't a good justification (as it is a lie), nor is "a CD costs almost nothing to produce" -- another lie. As covered in my other post, we don't like it when the record companies lie about pirates to demonize their behavior... so why stoop to their level?
"I think the real cause for the drop in sales is that the music stinks and the same artists keep pumping out the same crud."
Another common belief, but the sad reality is that most music has always stunk. Browsing the historical Billboard charts will quickly reveal this. Record companies have always pushed what will sell, with actual quality being an afterthought. The big difference between today and, say, 1973 (when the year's #1 single was Tony Orlando and Dawn's "Tie A Yellow Ribbon") is that today, with just a few clicks, we can get just about anything we want for free.
The top five most pirated tracks last week were from Alicia Keys, Fergie, Soulja Boy, Daughtry and somebody called "Baby Bash." The ability to get music for free has not improved our collective taste in music -- we still want that cruddy music; the difference is that we no longer have to pay for it.
"Spend $18.99 on a cd or spend all of 18 minutes on bittorrent. Hmmm wonder what a young person of today would choose?"
CDs haven't been $18.99 for a while now, except for the odd special version. The Amazon Top Ten presently has four at $7.99, one at $8.99, three at $9.99 and only and only two at $11.99. Prices at Target and Wal-Mart are similar, and, of course, on iTunes they're typically around $10 for a download.
Your point is well taken -- some people would rather get something for free than pay for it, even if it means breaking the law -- but it's time to drop the "piracy exists because CDs cost $18.99" argument (you probably don't like it when the record industry lies about you -- calling you a "thief" or similar pejorative terms when you're merely infringing copyright, etc.) CD prices have been in freefall over the past few years, due to the market forces covered in the article.
"Do you have a cite for that? I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm honestly curious."
I googled on "high definition penetration" and got some results that were so not what I was looking for, but when I refined my search I found this page, which cites a CEA statement from April that penetration is at 28%. The CEA is a trade group (think CEA::electronics industry as RIAA::record industry as AMA::medical industry) which runs CES, so apply whatever grains of salt you deem worthy.
My educated guess is that they include 720p sets in that figure (720p sets are regularly sold with "HDTV" labelling). In the case of a 720p set, I believe that a standard-def DVD player with an HDMI cable will provide the same output quality as a hi-def player.
I stand corrected. While from time to time various record label mouthpieces have acknowledged that ripping for personal use is okay, agreed that it'd be nearly impossible to get one of them to sit in the stand and state that it's officially "authorized."
The point I was trying to make is that the record label was not stating that the mere act of ripping is illegal. Some may draw that inference from the Engadget's use of "authorized" but as you correctly point out, they are different things.
"What if (thru Windows File Sharing), my hard drive itself is shared?? What about Administrative (C$) shares than many are not aware of?"
I can't answer this one for you. It's one of those Schroedinger things: it all depends on what the court decides. But first, the record companies would have to catch you, and then opt to take you to court.
Practically speaking, I wouldn't worry. If you're sharing your music with your workmates (as many, many people do), I suppose your biggest risk would be a disgruntled ex-employee who'd try to tip off the record labels, but the labels have much more verdant fields to plow. They'll probably continue to leave workplace piracy to the BSA for the time being!
The rips in the brief are unauthorized because they have been placed in the share directory. Here's how it breaks down:
A CD ripped to your hard drive for personal use: OK.
A CD ripped to your hard drive and then copied into your Kazaa share directory: unauthorized.
Thus, the very same ripped MP3 file can go from "authorized" to "unauthorized" just through the act of making it available for sharing. "Personal use" is the big deal here, and I think everybody will still continue to argue over what "personal use" means. The RIAA thinks that making rips available in a share directory isn't personal use, but many Slashdotters obviously disagree.
The quote in the October article was printed out of context, too.
"I read the article, and scrolled through the first page of comments, and can't seem to find the answer to this question: How did the RIAA know he had ripped all these cds to his hard drive? Was he caught doing something else (ie using Kazaa or whatever the kids use these days) and they decided to get him for the 2000 mp3s he wasn't sharing as well or something?"
Exactly. He got a settlement letter because he came up in the RIAA's sweep for P2P users. He's not being sued for ripping his own CDs; nor does the settlement letter relate to that. The RIAA is claiming -- and it appears that there's precedent to back it up -- that if you rip a CD and then place it in your Kazaa share directory, it's an unauthorized copy. NOT "CD rips are unauthorized copies."
The title and summary are misleading, and the article itself even leaves out this important fact. All three leave the reader with the impression that somebody is being sued for ripping CDs, when that is simply not the case.
So, using Randian terms, we have the consumers (or the "moochers", as Rand put it) -- us. We have the producers -- everybody in the music industry. We want them to keep producing, no matter what. We tell ourselves that artists will just have to adapt. We'll stop paying for music, but somehow they'll keep producing, just for the love of the art. We want the laws to be changed to legalize piracy, so the producers will have no way of stopping us.
And, the book which you quote features as one of its protagonists a musician who withdraws because the public seems to think he owes them something.
On whose side do you think Rand would be here -- the people who produce the music, or folks like us who believe that we deserve to have it for free?
"Doesn't this directly contradict what this lawsuit is about?"
Actually, no. As I understand it, the RIAA is going after him (via a settlement offer... no lawsuit yet) because they believe he is sharing music via P2P.
The key phrase is "unauthorized copies" and how its meaning can change independently of the act of ripping it. Here's how the RIAA sees it:
Rip a CD for your personal use: fine; the copy you have is an authorized copy.
Put that copy in your Kazaa share directory: suddenly, it's unauthorized. Even if it's the same rip!
It may seem like a meaningless distinction, but lawyers are like that.
Basically, the RIAA is being a stickler about personal use. Rip all you want, but if you go beyond those bounds, it's "unauthorized." Going beyond the bounds include putting those rips into your P2P share directory (as the RIAA is claiming this fellow did). I believe that if you give away or sell the CD once you've ripped it, the RIAA will likely claim it as unauthorized, as well.
Since you're quoted in the article I assume you're familiar with the case. The phrase "suing individuals who merely rip CDs" sounds a bit off... in particular, that word "merely." My guess is that he was targeted as a file sharer, and thus he was not "merely" ripping CDs -- rather, the RIAA alleges that he's sharing music which he happened to rip from his personal collection. Am I correct?
Unless the RIAA is asking for additional damages for ripping CDs (on top of the settlement money they're after, or the damages they might seek if it goes to trial), the headline "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs" seems disingenuous. Legally speaking, if he petted his dog that day, it 's the equivalent of stating "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Pet Their Dogs." Of course, if the RIAA will be seeking additional damages for the act of ripping (on top of making available), then I'm wrong, but I'm not sure this is the case.
Can you clarify? Do you agree that the write-up and/or the article is misleading in its omission?
"About a third of the plastic it took to make a 12-inch LP, at double the price."
Interesting trivia: when CDs began to overtake LPs in the 1980s, LPs could be had for about $10 - $12. If I recall correctly, CDs were being sold for $16 - $18. Of course, that was all in 1988 dollars.
That twelve buck LP in 1988 would cost you about $21 today in 2007 dollars. If CDs were really double the price, we'd be paying $40 for them. The reality is that CDs are about $10 or $12 today. So, in constant dollars, the price has dropped by 50% since the 1980s. If we compare it to the prices of CDs when they first came out (with the expected early adopter tax), it's a price drop of about 2/3.
There are plenty of good reasons to pirate music, but "because the prices have increased" isn't the best one.
"The extra is your contribution to cocaine being stuffed up snouts."
And after they snort all that cocaine, they go on all these wild derogatory generalization sprees, calling us "thieves" and whatnot. Shame on them!
"And then they wonder why people rip CD's..."
You rip CDs because the prices have doubled and because people in the recording industry use cocaine?
"1) you buy a radio, you can play it for free. BUT if you play it at your office or coffee shop then you owe the RIAA money. Those songs are being BROADCAST, anyone can receive and amplify them... unless you do it in a place of business then the government supported RIAA-MAFIA can come and extort you. "
There are a lot of exceptions for playing a radio in your place of business, so odds are that you wouldn't need a licence. But either way, that's ASCAP and BMI who collect the licensing fees for public performances. ASCAP and BMI are run BY and FOR composers and lyricists. I guess that's the composer-mafia and the lyricist-mafia, to use your terminology, but this distinction is important to understand if you're of the "record companies evil, artists good" mindset.
It's interesting how we talk about how artists can make money without having to sign record contracts or otherwise give money to the RIAA. Well, licensing is one such way. The beauty of it is that it's purely voluntary, the license is paid for by the person who's making the money (the business owner), and the money goes straight to the artist -- the record label doesn't see a penny. Yet, as you've made clear, this is unacceptable, as well.
"you can sing "happy birthday" to your friends and family on their birthday. BUT if you go to a restaurant the people working there can't sing "happy birthday" to anyone w/o paying extortion money to the RIAA."
I think you may be using "RIAA" as a generic term for anybody who asks for payment for music, but again -- when you sing a song in a restaurant, that's a music/lyrics issue, so again it's ASCAP/BMI. The RIAA deals with record companies, who sell recordings... if you want to perform your own version of a work, it's the composer and lyricist that you must deal with.
Sorry if it seems that I'm being pedantic, but I believe that the first step in fighting the enemy is knowing which enemy to fight.
"In my analog world, if I didn't like all the crap on an album the shills are trying to sell, I could purchase the single, and probably get a B-side or two with it. Now, I can't. Furthermore, with digital distribution, I'm asked to take a quality hit in order to help defray the costs of the distributor. Not likely. I'll download it."
This position is a common one. The argument used to be that P2P allowed us to break the tyrrany of having to buy the entire album. When iTunes and other retailers grew their catalogs and it became trivial to buy any track of of a CD (a far superior offering to the old "you can only buy the songs we choose in single form" model), the position changed to focus on DRM. Many people argued that they preferred P2P so they could get a DRM-less version. Now that iTunes, Amazon and more online retailers are offering more and more DRM-free tracks, the position has shifted to one of quality: P2P allows them to get a lossless FLAC or somesuch. And when iTunes and the rest start offering higher bitrates, you just know that this crowd will come up with a new rationale.
The irony is that the vast majority of music listeners aren't doing so on $350 Grado headphones or Emu studio monitors; they're using the crappy earbuds that came with their iPods, or (slightly less crappy) $50 Sony earbuds if they take their music a little more seriously. Yet the "it's all about the quality" piracy rationale is quite popular.
Present company excluded; of course... you're probably one of those "golden ears" people for whom only uncompressed will do, so you really don't have any choice but to use P2P. At least the upside is that you're also saving a lot of money.
"I would also like to remind everyone that intellectual property is a new concept, and had we had it years ago, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare and Newton."
Huh? Shakespeare knew very well what intellectual property was. His work had exclusive performance rights, exclusive copyright, and the rudiments of other things that we've dealt with as a society for the following 500 years. Isaac Newton came later; by the time he was born, the Stationer's Company (which effectively ran copyright in England) had been around for some 250 years. More to the point, he lived to see the Statute of Anne come into existence.
I know it's easy (and tempting) to imagine artists of eras past as living in a creative utopia where they weren't in it for the money, and didn't defend their rights using the laws available at the time. While there always have and always will be those precious kind souls who release their work into the public domain and want not for compensation, you've picked two particularly bad examples in Shakespeare and Newton.
"Actually you are wrong, it wasn't the price they could advertise at that was dictated, but the actual selling price."
I am correct. I think the point you're making is that when you set a MAP, it's a de facto way of setting the selling price. As covered in my original post, vendors can sell below the MAP, but not advertise below it -- but what would be the point? It's the ads which drive customers to the store.
Fry's Electronics gets around this on the iPod by running ads that state that there's an in-store discount, and printing the retail price, but not actually printing the reduced price. In the case of Fry's, I don't know if Apple is actually throwing them co-op money; at the minimum, honoring MAPs is likely a condition of participating in Apple's Authorized Reseller program.
Given the value of the AR program, Apple is essentially price fixing. Before all the fanboys freak out -- remember, lots and lots of companies have MAP programs in place. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with MAP programs.
But back to your point, I don't recall the specifics of BBY and Wal-Mart's complaint, but it was probably along the same lines: since that co-op money was so valuable (Tower Records et al were looking death in the eye, and death was a yellow smiley face riding a horse shaped like a blue and yellow price tag) that they were essentially setting the selling price.
The obvious irony is that Best Buy and Wal-Mart both know a thing or two about using market influence to set pricing. As coercive market forces, they can do damage to the free market on an order of magnitude beyond the largest record company.
"your sentence is a little vague - who was convicted of price fixing, the record companies or best buy?. .."
The record company. Specifically, Universal.
When Best Buy and Wal-Mart started selling CDs as loss leaders, some of the big music chains (Tower and TWE) freaked out. They couldn't match BBY and Wal-Mart pricing, as most of their business was from the sale of CDs.
So, Universal set them up with a MAP program (essentially what's already been discussed here): Universal would give them co-op ad money (ie. help fund newspaper ads and the like) in exchange for dictating the minimum price at which Tower and TWE could advertise (as with the anecdote about iPods, the stores could always sell at a lower price; they just could not advertise at a lower price). For what it's worth, countless companies -- even "good" companies like Apple -- have MAP programs.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart got wind of this and put pressure on the government. The government then bitch slapped Universal. Here's what happened next:
Many people got refund checks in the mail. To get one, all you needed to do was say that you'd bought a CD at TWE or Tower Records during the period that the MAP was in place.
Everybody got a new justification for pirating music ("The record companies have been convicted of price fixing!")
Tower Records filed for bankruptcy.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart basically got to tell the government what to do. They continue to sell CDs at or below cost, and the long slow death of the indie record retailer continues.
Apple and countless other vendors continue to run MAP programs.
The lesson here: don't piss off Wal-Mart and Best Buy. The price fixing settlement was great news for people who believe in the "what's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" credo, particularly if they don't particularly miss the days when there was more of a selection of music retailers.
"I never understood why you would *buy* a friggin ringtone. Most phones these days have usb plugs built in, or an transflash slot. A little sound editing and some technical jiggery-pokery later, and you have WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT as a ringtone."
I have no doubt that all of your friends are not only capable of the technical jiggery and the pokery, it's actually your hobby. You just love you some technical jiggery, particularly when it's with a side of pokery.
Next time you're at Walgreens, look at five people (your friends don't count, assuming you pulled your friends away from their jiggery and/or pokery sessions to get them to come with you to Walgreens). Any five people. The middle-aged cashier. The jailbait playing with the lipstick. The creepy guy in the photo section. These people just don't have the jiggery/pokery aptitude necessary to roll their own ringtones. Okay, maybe the creepy guy in the photo section does. But those other four people: they're the ones who are buying ringtones.
It's like that other question that boggles a lot of Slashdotters: why would anybody *buy* a friggen TiVo when with some spare computer parts, an IR blaster, a Linux distro and five troy ounces of jiggery/pokery, they could build their own? Sure, it smells like burned solder and you had to recompile the kernel a few times (the secret is "patch -pl -jiggery -pokery"), it doesn't have that cool lighting or the nice case or that bee-boop sound when you push the buttons, but you're STANDING UP to the MAN.
"Best thing in the world to get a phone call in a public area to have your phone shout, "My anus is bleeding...""
Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the creepy guy in the Walgreens photo section was shouting, too.
"There's at least an argument that such a law would be unconstitutional as it would make computer repair technicians into agents of the state. It's one thing if they act voluntarily to report suspicious files (like here), it's another if there's a criminal penalty for failing to do so. I'm curious and will read up on it. Thanks for the tip."
It's been the case for a while that hosting providers must, by law, report child pornography when they find it. Been there, done that, got the ncmec.org login. I don't understand why extending this to repair technicians would bring up any new constitutional issues that don't already exist. Might be one of those legal elephants in the room that nobody -- not even the ACLU -- wants to touch, as it's political suicide... would you want to be the one to go to court to defend hosting providers' rights to protect kiddy porn collectors?
"Along the lines of other comments, quantity does NOT necessarily equate to innovation or quality."
I think many people are misreading the summary. It does not state that the IEEE based their analysis on the quantity of the patents. This is what was written (emphasis mine):
According to a recent analysis by IEEE, Microsoft's patent portfolio tops the industry in terms of overall quality of its patents.
I agree with you that quantity != quality. I also agree with you that Microsoft and IBM are similar in that both have research labs which churn out a lot of patented ideas, few of which may end up in retail products. However, that is not germaine. The IEEE's analysis is based on overall quality.
"Does not mean making products. It is in regards to what they are doing with their money and what they are developing. Nowhere in there does it say "worthwhile" or "what people want" Hurrah for flaimbait."
And the summary goes off on this misleading tangent after the phrase "All of which begs the question."
So, at first I thought that the submitter was using the phrase "begs the question" incorrectly. But, since he is actually engaging the the logical fallacy of begging the question, his usage is correct! But I'm not sure if he really intended to announce that he was about to commit a logical fallacy.
"Wait a minute. This is totally backwards. Being played on the radio is basically advertising. The record companies should be paying radio stations to get artists heard. And the bigger the hit, the more they pay to keep it playing. Or something like that."
This is really weird -- isn't the Slashdot zeitgeist that the "pay for a copy of a song" model is dead and that the value of recorded music is approaching zero? Don't we all laugh at the record companies for trying to cling to that dying business model?
So why is it that your comment (and several others) encourages the record industry to stick to its current model and let radio airplay sell music... when common wisdom around here is that more and more people will opt to pirate what they hear, rather than buy? I know that many people claim that piracy is also free advertising, but the record labels are looking for a way to make money somewhere.
I think that, in general, we want the record industry to look to other revenue streams so they're not so dependent on the sale of music. I happen to agree with you that trying to make up the difference from radio airplay is a bad idea (it will only promote homogeny in terrestrial radio as big stations will take fewer chances with their playlists, and smaller, indie stations will face extinction). But since we like to talk up the notion of music sales being dead, we should not act surprised when the record industry tries going off in a new direction in an effort at self-preservation.
Slashdot Mirror
"The more people realize that the RIAA is trying to attack us doing the simple act of ripping CDs to MP3s, Joe Sixpack might actually give a second thought if he really wants/needs to spend the $15 to get a new CD."
This has already been covered endlessly. He isn't under scrutiny for simply ripping the CDs. The record companies claim that he does not have authorization to rip CDs for the purpose of placing them into his Kazaa share folder.
Those eleven words at the end of the sentence may seem inconsequential but they make all the difference. It may not make sense to some people, but in the eyes of the record industry, a ripped MP3 file goes from "authorized" to "unauthorized" when it's placed into your P2P share directory... even though it's the same file.
"While that might be true, I feel it's unfortunate that consumers are bearing the blunt of the bloat that exists in the record industry. It seems to me as if record industry executives are getting wealthy off of content that they, frankly, do not create. Having read about how the industry actually works, it strikes me as a system where everyone's taking a cut away from the artists, leaving the consumer to suffer due to higher prices. Is it unreasonable to hope that the industry can find a business model where artists can make more while consumers lose less?"
The big record labels will never be able to do it. The more overhead, the more hands there are grabbing at the money. I've met a few folks who've run indie labels who've told me that they pay their artists higher royalties than the big labels. So, artists can choose to sign with smaller labels and potentially get a larger piece of a smaller pie. Or, go the self-distribution route and get all of the pie... minus the part they have to give to the bank.
It's like that in any industry. Work for a big company and you'll just be a cog in a wheel -- you might have a higher level of job security and other benefits. But if you go to work for that startup, it might be a hell of a ride, but you'll have a bigger share of the company's success.
"So I really want to know where these $19 CDs are and why I can't find them -- do they really exist or are Slashbotters just making that number up to cement their idea that RIAA sponsored music is horrid (like we didn't know already)?"
I think you may have meant to reply to the GP, not my post (I, too, corrected the GP on his assertation that CDs are $18.99).
Disproving it is easy -- just browse the Amazon Top 100 or take a look at prices at a major retailer. I think that "CDs are $20" is just one of those curious Slashdot memes. It could be that CDs were probably around $20 when P2P exploded, so that's the price that many Slashdotters remember from that point when they stopped buying CDs and started using P2P to acquire their music. But, sadly, I think that there's some willful ignorance here in an effort to feed the "CDs are overpriced" zeitgeist. Acknowledging that we pirated when they were $20, we're still pirating when they're $10, and we'll keep pirating even when they're $5 just doesn't have that same whiff of righteousness and sanctity.
Sure, some CDs still sell for $18 - $20 -- audiophile-grade classical CDs, CDs bundled with concert DVDs, and the like -- but they're not the mainstream. The stuff that's pirated the most is the same pop crap that can be had for $8.99 at Amazon or Wal-Mart.
"CDs are overpriced. Here in Vancouver, CDs usually cost between $15.99 and $24.99. (Yes, you read that right. No, these are not special edition or imports.) If CDs sold for around $5, not as many people would bother illegally downloading music."
Yeah, Canadians get screwed at retail on a lot of things. Back when the Canadian dollar worth $0.80 US, US companies (including the ones I've worked for) would jack the Canadian retail prices up by 20% or so to accomodate. But now that the Canadian and US dollars are at parity, many companies (at least in the high tech industry) are still padding the Canadian retail prices, just because they figure Canadian customers are used to it.
Anyway, I'm sure your theory is correct, but maybe not to the degree you think. In the USA, CDs used to cost $18 - $20 about five years ago and people were claiming that if only the record companies reduced the prices, piracy wouldn't be a problem. Today, most new CDs are sold at $8 - $12, and people are still claiming that. Thus, I think that even if CDs hit $5, the hard-core pirates will still say that they'll get around to going legit when the price hits $3!
"Most new popular music today is disposable and no one wants to pay for this crap. (Now get off my lawn.)"
For me, pop music stopped being good around 1998. What year did it for you? Ask anybody and they'll give you a different answer. Everybody gets off that pop culture bus at some point. Most music has always sucked, despite the fact that the average guy on the street will swear that music was much, much better in $RAND_YEAR.
"Ya'd think they would drop the price to something reasonable, like $9.99. The cost of the disk is almost nothing."
As I covered in another post, the going rate for CDs is about $9.99. Prices have indeed dropped. They were in the $18 range about five years ago, but due to piracy, competition from other forms of entertainment, etc. etc. they've dropped significantly.
Despite material costs being below $1.50, it's still the case that record companies make pretty thin margins on CD sales relative to margins in other industries. I know this will probably boggle many people who read this, but there's a huge gulf between BOM cost and cost of sale. All of the record companies' expenses (salaries, promotions, overhead, etc. etc.) must come out of the sale of that CD. The biggest piece of the pie, believe it or not, is usually the royalties.
There are plenty of reasons to justify piracy. Actually, it's my long-held belief that you need no justification... if you'd rather have something for free than pay for it, then go for it. It's not like you need to make somebody else a bad guy to justify your actions. But "CDs cost $18" certainly isn't a good justification (as it is a lie), nor is "a CD costs almost nothing to produce" -- another lie. As covered in my other post, we don't like it when the record companies lie about pirates to demonize their behavior... so why stoop to their level?
"I think the real cause for the drop in sales is that the music stinks and the same artists keep pumping out the same crud."
Another common belief, but the sad reality is that most music has always stunk. Browsing the historical Billboard charts will quickly reveal this. Record companies have always pushed what will sell, with actual quality being an afterthought. The big difference between today and, say, 1973 (when the year's #1 single was Tony Orlando and Dawn's "Tie A Yellow Ribbon") is that today, with just a few clicks, we can get just about anything we want for free.
The top five most pirated tracks last week were from Alicia Keys, Fergie, Soulja Boy, Daughtry and somebody called "Baby Bash." The ability to get music for free has not improved our collective taste in music -- we still want that cruddy music; the difference is that we no longer have to pay for it.
"Spend $18.99 on a cd or spend all of 18 minutes on bittorrent. Hmmm wonder what a young person of today would choose?"
CDs haven't been $18.99 for a while now, except for the odd special version. The Amazon Top Ten presently has four at $7.99, one at $8.99, three at $9.99 and only and only two at $11.99. Prices at Target and Wal-Mart are similar, and, of course, on iTunes they're typically around $10 for a download.
Your point is well taken -- some people would rather get something for free than pay for it, even if it means breaking the law -- but it's time to drop the "piracy exists because CDs cost $18.99" argument (you probably don't like it when the record industry lies about you -- calling you a "thief" or similar pejorative terms when you're merely infringing copyright, etc.) CD prices have been in freefall over the past few years, due to the market forces covered in the article.
"Do you have a cite for that? I'm not trying to nitpick, I'm honestly curious."
I googled on "high definition penetration" and got some results that were so not what I was looking for, but when I refined my search I found this page, which cites a CEA statement from April that penetration is at 28%. The CEA is a trade group (think CEA::electronics industry as RIAA::record industry as AMA::medical industry) which runs CES, so apply whatever grains of salt you deem worthy.
My educated guess is that they include 720p sets in that figure (720p sets are regularly sold with "HDTV" labelling). In the case of a 720p set, I believe that a standard-def DVD player with an HDMI cable will provide the same output quality as a hi-def player.
I stand corrected. While from time to time various record label mouthpieces have acknowledged that ripping for personal use is okay, agreed that it'd be nearly impossible to get one of them to sit in the stand and state that it's officially "authorized."
The point I was trying to make is that the record label was not stating that the mere act of ripping is illegal. Some may draw that inference from the Engadget's use of "authorized" but as you correctly point out, they are different things.
"What if (thru Windows File Sharing), my hard drive itself is shared?? What about Administrative (C$) shares than many are not aware of?"
I can't answer this one for you. It's one of those Schroedinger things: it all depends on what the court decides. But first, the record companies would have to catch you, and then opt to take you to court.
Practically speaking, I wouldn't worry. If you're sharing your music with your workmates (as many, many people do), I suppose your biggest risk would be a disgruntled ex-employee who'd try to tip off the record labels, but the labels have much more verdant fields to plow. They'll probably continue to leave workplace piracy to the BSA for the time being!
The rips in the brief are unauthorized because they have been placed in the share directory. Here's how it breaks down:
Thus, the very same ripped MP3 file can go from "authorized" to "unauthorized" just through the act of making it available for sharing. "Personal use" is the big deal here, and I think everybody will still continue to argue over what "personal use" means. The RIAA thinks that making rips available in a share directory isn't personal use, but many Slashdotters obviously disagree.
The quote in the October article was printed out of context, too.
"I read the article, and scrolled through the first page of comments, and can't seem to find the answer to this question: How did the RIAA know he had ripped all these cds to his hard drive? Was he caught doing something else (ie using Kazaa or whatever the kids use these days) and they decided to get him for the 2000 mp3s he wasn't sharing as well or something?"
Exactly. He got a settlement letter because he came up in the RIAA's sweep for P2P users. He's not being sued for ripping his own CDs; nor does the settlement letter relate to that. The RIAA is claiming -- and it appears that there's precedent to back it up -- that if you rip a CD and then place it in your Kazaa share directory, it's an unauthorized copy. NOT "CD rips are unauthorized copies."
The title and summary are misleading, and the article itself even leaves out this important fact. All three leave the reader with the impression that somebody is being sued for ripping CDs, when that is simply not the case.
So, using Randian terms, we have the consumers (or the "moochers", as Rand put it) -- us. We have the producers -- everybody in the music industry. We want them to keep producing, no matter what. We tell ourselves that artists will just have to adapt. We'll stop paying for music, but somehow they'll keep producing, just for the love of the art. We want the laws to be changed to legalize piracy, so the producers will have no way of stopping us.
And, the book which you quote features as one of its protagonists a musician who withdraws because the public seems to think he owes them something.
On whose side do you think Rand would be here -- the people who produce the music, or folks like us who believe that we deserve to have it for free?
"Doesn't this directly contradict what this lawsuit is about?"
Actually, no. As I understand it, the RIAA is going after him (via a settlement offer... no lawsuit yet) because they believe he is sharing music via P2P.
The key phrase is "unauthorized copies" and how its meaning can change independently of the act of ripping it. Here's how the RIAA sees it:
It may seem like a meaningless distinction, but lawyers are like that.
Basically, the RIAA is being a stickler about personal use. Rip all you want, but if you go beyond those bounds, it's "unauthorized." Going beyond the bounds include putting those rips into your P2P share directory (as the RIAA is claiming this fellow did). I believe that if you give away or sell the CD once you've ripped it, the RIAA will likely claim it as unauthorized, as well.
Mr. Beckerman,
Since you're quoted in the article I assume you're familiar with the case. The phrase "suing individuals who merely rip CDs" sounds a bit off... in particular, that word "merely." My guess is that he was targeted as a file sharer, and thus he was not "merely" ripping CDs -- rather, the RIAA alleges that he's sharing music which he happened to rip from his personal collection. Am I correct?
Unless the RIAA is asking for additional damages for ripping CDs (on top of the settlement money they're after, or the damages they might seek if it goes to trial), the headline "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Rip CDs" seems disingenuous. Legally speaking, if he petted his dog that day, it 's the equivalent of stating "RIAA Now Filing Suits Against Consumers Who Pet Their Dogs." Of course, if the RIAA will be seeking additional damages for the act of ripping (on top of making available), then I'm wrong, but I'm not sure this is the case.
Can you clarify? Do you agree that the write-up and/or the article is misleading in its omission?
"About a third of the plastic it took to make a 12-inch LP, at double the price."
Interesting trivia: when CDs began to overtake LPs in the 1980s, LPs could be had for about $10 - $12. If I recall correctly, CDs were being sold for $16 - $18. Of course, that was all in 1988 dollars.
That twelve buck LP in 1988 would cost you about $21 today in 2007 dollars. If CDs were really double the price, we'd be paying $40 for them. The reality is that CDs are about $10 or $12 today. So, in constant dollars, the price has dropped by 50% since the 1980s. If we compare it to the prices of CDs when they first came out (with the expected early adopter tax), it's a price drop of about 2/3.
There are plenty of good reasons to pirate music, but "because the prices have increased" isn't the best one.
"The extra is your contribution to cocaine being stuffed up snouts."
And after they snort all that cocaine, they go on all these wild derogatory generalization sprees, calling us "thieves" and whatnot. Shame on them!
"And then they wonder why people rip CD's..."
You rip CDs because the prices have doubled and because people in the recording industry use cocaine?
"1) you buy a radio, you can play it for free. BUT if you play it at your office or coffee shop then you owe the RIAA money. Those songs are being BROADCAST, anyone can receive and amplify them ... unless you do it in a place of business then the government supported RIAA-MAFIA can come and extort you. "
There are a lot of exceptions for playing a radio in your place of business, so odds are that you wouldn't need a licence. But either way, that's ASCAP and BMI who collect the licensing fees for public performances. ASCAP and BMI are run BY and FOR composers and lyricists. I guess that's the composer-mafia and the lyricist-mafia, to use your terminology, but this distinction is important to understand if you're of the "record companies evil, artists good" mindset.
It's interesting how we talk about how artists can make money without having to sign record contracts or otherwise give money to the RIAA. Well, licensing is one such way. The beauty of it is that it's purely voluntary, the license is paid for by the person who's making the money (the business owner), and the money goes straight to the artist -- the record label doesn't see a penny. Yet, as you've made clear, this is unacceptable, as well.
"you can sing "happy birthday" to your friends and family on their birthday. BUT if you go to a restaurant the people working there can't sing "happy birthday" to anyone w/o paying extortion money to the RIAA."
I think you may be using "RIAA" as a generic term for anybody who asks for payment for music, but again -- when you sing a song in a restaurant, that's a music/lyrics issue, so again it's ASCAP/BMI. The RIAA deals with record companies, who sell recordings... if you want to perform your own version of a work, it's the composer and lyricist that you must deal with.
Sorry if it seems that I'm being pedantic, but I believe that the first step in fighting the enemy is knowing which enemy to fight.
"In my analog world, if I didn't like all the crap on an album the shills are trying to sell, I could purchase the single, and probably get a B-side or two with it. Now, I can't. Furthermore, with digital distribution, I'm asked to take a quality hit in order to help defray the costs of the distributor. Not likely. I'll download it."
This position is a common one. The argument used to be that P2P allowed us to break the tyrrany of having to buy the entire album. When iTunes and other retailers grew their catalogs and it became trivial to buy any track of of a CD (a far superior offering to the old "you can only buy the songs we choose in single form" model), the position changed to focus on DRM. Many people argued that they preferred P2P so they could get a DRM-less version. Now that iTunes, Amazon and more online retailers are offering more and more DRM-free tracks, the position has shifted to one of quality: P2P allows them to get a lossless FLAC or somesuch. And when iTunes and the rest start offering higher bitrates, you just know that this crowd will come up with a new rationale.
The irony is that the vast majority of music listeners aren't doing so on $350 Grado headphones or Emu studio monitors; they're using the crappy earbuds that came with their iPods, or (slightly less crappy) $50 Sony earbuds if they take their music a little more seriously. Yet the "it's all about the quality" piracy rationale is quite popular.
Present company excluded; of course... you're probably one of those "golden ears" people for whom only uncompressed will do, so you really don't have any choice but to use P2P. At least the upside is that you're also saving a lot of money.
"I would also like to remind everyone that intellectual property is a new concept, and had we had it years ago, we wouldn't have the works of Shakespeare and Newton."
Huh? Shakespeare knew very well what intellectual property was. His work had exclusive performance rights, exclusive copyright, and the rudiments of other things that we've dealt with as a society for the following 500 years. Isaac Newton came later; by the time he was born, the Stationer's Company (which effectively ran copyright in England) had been around for some 250 years. More to the point, he lived to see the Statute of Anne come into existence.
I know it's easy (and tempting) to imagine artists of eras past as living in a creative utopia where they weren't in it for the money, and didn't defend their rights using the laws available at the time. While there always have and always will be those precious kind souls who release their work into the public domain and want not for compensation, you've picked two particularly bad examples in Shakespeare and Newton.
"Actually you are wrong, it wasn't the price they could advertise at that was dictated, but the actual selling price."
I am correct. I think the point you're making is that when you set a MAP, it's a de facto way of setting the selling price. As covered in my original post, vendors can sell below the MAP, but not advertise below it -- but what would be the point? It's the ads which drive customers to the store.
Fry's Electronics gets around this on the iPod by running ads that state that there's an in-store discount, and printing the retail price, but not actually printing the reduced price. In the case of Fry's, I don't know if Apple is actually throwing them co-op money; at the minimum, honoring MAPs is likely a condition of participating in Apple's Authorized Reseller program.
Given the value of the AR program, Apple is essentially price fixing. Before all the fanboys freak out -- remember, lots and lots of companies have MAP programs in place. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with MAP programs.
But back to your point, I don't recall the specifics of BBY and Wal-Mart's complaint, but it was probably along the same lines: since that co-op money was so valuable (Tower Records et al were looking death in the eye, and death was a yellow smiley face riding a horse shaped like a blue and yellow price tag) that they were essentially setting the selling price.
The obvious irony is that Best Buy and Wal-Mart both know a thing or two about using market influence to set pricing. As coercive market forces, they can do damage to the free market on an order of magnitude beyond the largest record company.
"your sentence is a little vague - who was convicted of price fixing, the record companies or best buy?. . ."
The record company. Specifically, Universal.
When Best Buy and Wal-Mart started selling CDs as loss leaders, some of the big music chains (Tower and TWE) freaked out. They couldn't match BBY and Wal-Mart pricing, as most of their business was from the sale of CDs.
So, Universal set them up with a MAP program (essentially what's already been discussed here): Universal would give them co-op ad money (ie. help fund newspaper ads and the like) in exchange for dictating the minimum price at which Tower and TWE could advertise (as with the anecdote about iPods, the stores could always sell at a lower price; they just could not advertise at a lower price). For what it's worth, countless companies -- even "good" companies like Apple -- have MAP programs.
Best Buy and Wal-Mart got wind of this and put pressure on the government. The government then bitch slapped Universal. Here's what happened next:
The lesson here: don't piss off Wal-Mart and Best Buy. The price fixing settlement was great news for people who believe in the "what's good for Wal-Mart is good for America" credo, particularly if they don't particularly miss the days when there was more of a selection of music retailers.
"I never understood why you would *buy* a friggin ringtone. Most phones these days have usb plugs built in, or an transflash slot. A little sound editing and some technical jiggery-pokery later, and you have WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT as a ringtone."
I have no doubt that all of your friends are not only capable of the technical jiggery and the pokery, it's actually your hobby. You just love you some technical jiggery, particularly when it's with a side of pokery.
Next time you're at Walgreens, look at five people (your friends don't count, assuming you pulled your friends away from their jiggery and/or pokery sessions to get them to come with you to Walgreens). Any five people. The middle-aged cashier. The jailbait playing with the lipstick. The creepy guy in the photo section. These people just don't have the jiggery/pokery aptitude necessary to roll their own ringtones. Okay, maybe the creepy guy in the photo section does. But those other four people: they're the ones who are buying ringtones.
It's like that other question that boggles a lot of Slashdotters: why would anybody *buy* a friggen TiVo when with some spare computer parts, an IR blaster, a Linux distro and five troy ounces of jiggery/pokery, they could build their own? Sure, it smells like burned solder and you had to recompile the kernel a few times (the secret is "patch -pl -jiggery -pokery"), it doesn't have that cool lighting or the nice case or that bee-boop sound when you push the buttons, but you're STANDING UP to the MAN.
"Best thing in the world to get a phone call in a public area to have your phone shout, "My anus is bleeding...""
Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the creepy guy in the Walgreens photo section was shouting, too.
"There's at least an argument that such a law would be unconstitutional as it would make computer repair technicians into agents of the state. It's one thing if they act voluntarily to report suspicious files (like here), it's another if there's a criminal penalty for failing to do so. I'm curious and will read up on it. Thanks for the tip."
It's been the case for a while that hosting providers must, by law, report child pornography when they find it. Been there, done that, got the ncmec.org login. I don't understand why extending this to repair technicians would bring up any new constitutional issues that don't already exist. Might be one of those legal elephants in the room that nobody -- not even the ACLU -- wants to touch, as it's political suicide... would you want to be the one to go to court to defend hosting providers' rights to protect kiddy porn collectors?
"Along the lines of other comments, quantity does NOT necessarily equate to innovation or quality."
I think many people are misreading the summary. It does not state that the IEEE based their analysis on the quantity of the patents. This is what was written (emphasis mine):
I agree with you that quantity != quality. I also agree with you that Microsoft and IBM are similar in that both have research labs which churn out a lot of patented ideas, few of which may end up in retail products. However, that is not germaine. The IEEE's analysis is based on overall quality.
"Does not mean making products. It is in regards to what they are doing with their money and what they are developing. Nowhere in there does it say "worthwhile" or "what people want" Hurrah for flaimbait."
And the summary goes off on this misleading tangent after the phrase "All of which begs the question."
So, at first I thought that the submitter was using the phrase "begs the question" incorrectly. But, since he is actually engaging the the logical fallacy of begging the question, his usage is correct! But I'm not sure if he really intended to announce that he was about to commit a logical fallacy.
"Wait a minute. This is totally backwards. Being played on the radio is basically advertising. The record companies should be paying radio stations to get artists heard. And the bigger the hit, the more they pay to keep it playing. Or something like that."
This is really weird -- isn't the Slashdot zeitgeist that the "pay for a copy of a song" model is dead and that the value of recorded music is approaching zero? Don't we all laugh at the record companies for trying to cling to that dying business model?
So why is it that your comment (and several others) encourages the record industry to stick to its current model and let radio airplay sell music... when common wisdom around here is that more and more people will opt to pirate what they hear, rather than buy? I know that many people claim that piracy is also free advertising, but the record labels are looking for a way to make money somewhere.
I think that, in general, we want the record industry to look to other revenue streams so they're not so dependent on the sale of music. I happen to agree with you that trying to make up the difference from radio airplay is a bad idea (it will only promote homogeny in terrestrial radio as big stations will take fewer chances with their playlists, and smaller, indie stations will face extinction). But since we like to talk up the notion of music sales being dead, we should not act surprised when the record industry tries going off in a new direction in an effort at self-preservation.