"Mashboxx itself [mashboxx.com] is a sham RIAA front company"
Mashboxx is, of course, Wayne Rosso's company. Wayne was the pirate's best friend back when he was Grokster's CEO and when he later ran Optisoft, which provided Blubster -- he was not shy about defending the rights of P2P applications to exist, and regularly told the record companies to fuck off, in so many words. He even founded a trade group of P2P application providers called P2P United.
Providing a P2P application that's compatible with the rights and wishes of copyright holders does not make one a "sham RIAA front company." Yeah, yeah, all those greedy copyright holders are the enemy, and entertainment wants to be free, and all that, but Wayne saw the writing on the wall. At least he's having some measure of success -- remember when Kazaa printed those full-page newspaper ads to try to get the record company's cooperation in migrating to a permission-based P2P network? Kazaa wasn't a "sham RIAA front company," either.
For years, Mr. Rosso was trying to separate the concept of P2P (highly efficient file sharing) from the current primary application of P2P (piracy); now he's doing something about it.
"Why not support for PostgreSQL? How hard can it possibly to write code that supports more then DB? It's unbelievable that almost no blogging software supports a real RDBM."
WordPress is open source. This means that if you like, you can contribute by making the improvements yourself. That's how open source software tends to be improved... each contributor adds the features that they would like to see.
At the very least, you should give it a try. If you're right, and adding PostGRE is the trivial task that you imply, then it should be a snap, and WordPress will be the better for it. If it turns out to be a little too daunting, then you'll have answered your own question of why it hasn't yet been done.
"And copyright holders are, after all, part of those people you're talking about. It would be very shortsighted of us to ignore their needs since they create things that we want!"
Good point. Let's also keep in mind that musicians, authors, and poets traditionally make the lowest average income of any profession. How sad that many people want to marginalize them into oblivion. "I'll make copies of your work for free, and you'll have to fend for yourself by doing concerts and live readings -- well, good luck with that!" isn't something I would want to hear. If I rely on the fruits of my labor to feed my family, let me make the choice of whether I want to give it away, OK?
Sadly, a majority with technology will always win against a small group that has something that the bigger group wants. For an example, look around and tell me how many American Indians you see. Our ancestors didn't kill them off because our ancestors were evil -- it's simply human nature that they wanted what the Indians had, so they rationalized ways to do it. Again, no rights or wrongs here... just human nature. You see this today when you read comments from Slashdotters who defend file sharing as some sort of civil disobedience. I guess there's no time to worry about how the songwriter's going to pay the rent, when one is busy making room for one's self up on that pedestal along with, say, Rosa Parks.
"Remember, this is a war of rights... civil disobedience is a way of showing your discontentment with a law."
No, you just want some free tunes, and you enjoy downloading music and sharing it with others so they don't have to pay for it, either. There's nothing wrong with (and I mean this in a nice way) being a cheapskate, or wanting to save a buck or two. No need to compare your actions to those of Emmett Till, Lamar Smith, Rosa Parks et al.
"How and why is downloading something illegal? Wouldn't distribution be illegal because it's copyright infringement? But how or why is downloading be illegal?"
You make a very good point, but the RIAA found her because her PC was running Kazaa and sharing a whole bunch of MP3 files.
They are speaking of intellectual property in general, not the music industry in particular. The US also exports a lot of movies and software. I don't know how much software and DVD content is pirated in Russia, but it's probably significant as well. This would put your calculation off by a significant amount.
"I would also consider it good samaritan-ship to be generous and share music, isn't that what they teach us to do in school? To share? It's not as if a bucaneer would ripping it directly off their site w/o permission, they'd really only be sharing music with their friends?"
Yes -- please do share the music of those musicians, authors and programmers who want you to share their work... and there are plenty of them. There's a ton of Creative Commons, shareware, freeware, and public domain media out there. Otherwise, another concept you may have learned in school applies: treat others as you would like to be treated. This is often called the "golden rule."
"Is their really any difference between lending a CD to friend and sharing music via online?"
Yes: volume. Ripping a CD and putting it into your Kazaa directory creates the potential for it to be on 10,000 other people's hard drives in a matter of days. I can guess that you would never pirate something as an alternative to buying it (you probably download something, listen to it, and buy a copy if you like it), but, sadly, many people use P2P to save money. And, while I'm sure we all agree that the real artists have day jobs, that trying to make money in music is evil and sinful and wrong, etc. etc., the fact remains that there are many artists, writers, composers, software engineers and the like who rely on the sale of their work to feed their families.
I'm not sure how you read that into my post. I am stating a fact: whether we like it or not, our country makes a hell of a lot of money on intellectual property. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is, as the math texts say, an exercise left to the reader.
The countries that are not signatories to the Berne Convention do not generally have what I consider to be "good" governments, either. If I were to try to come up with a list of five countries in the world that I consider to have "good" governments (and this would be difficult), all of them happen to be signatories.
For reference, the latest list of non-signatories that I could find is: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen. I would not want to live in any of these countries, and the ability to pirate music to my heart's content would not make up for the other issues. Others may feel differently.
"I don't know which is sadder, that the RIAA has such influence over Congress, or that this might be true."
It's extremely true -- intellectual property is one of the US's biggest exports. This is quite clear to people who've left the US and seen the impact of US culture. American movies are popular worldwide, American pop stars are popular all over, and Windows is the #1 operating system worldwide. The taxes paid on the revenue earned by US producers of intellectual property are a major reason that we enjoy the quality of life that we do.
Yes, you are correct. Whether we like it or not, intellectual property is one of the USA's biggest exports, if not the biggest export. It's one of the reasons why we're one of the richest nations on the planet, and it's a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy. It's no coincidence that countries which don't pay much bother to the Berne Convention and other similar international agreements are by and large shitty places to live.
"Musicians don't really need traditional publishing and distribution anymore. Once the practice of developing a fanbase and breaking bigtime really takes off, the dinosaurs will die. And they know it, btw."
The first part of your post was dead-on accurate, but you lost me on the last part. You see, folks have been saying (in so many words) "The record companies are going to be gone once musicians start using this Internet thing to their advantage" for more than five years now. It was a popular rallying cry back when the original Napster was big.
The problem is this: the iTMS is a runaway success. The record companies (perhaps due to this collusion) are laughing all the way to the bank. "Open source" record labels like Magnatune, which fit many Slashdotters' perceptions of the future of music, are struggling. It seems that the record companies are also using the Internet to their advantage, and it does seem to be the case that a $5,000 home studio and a web site just doesn't seem to be a direct, drop-in replacement for a smoothly operating marketing and distribution machine, and a team of experts who understand the whole marketing and promotion thing -- and who charge for their expertise by taking 80% of the wholesale price of the CD or the downloadable track.
I'm sure you know all this -- my point isn't to argue with you. My question is this: if this hasn't happened yet, when will it happen? When will people realize that iTunes, Yahoo! Music, Napster et al. suck, and start buying music from artists without benefit of a recording contract in volumes that are worth discussing? Five years? Ten? Twenty?
Right; that judgement was a win for Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Wal-Mart and Best Buy went to the government when Universal was handing out program money (funds for newspaper advertisements and the like) to Tower Records and TWE in return for setting MAPs (minimum advertised prices). The only result was that the record companies ended their MAP programs. You only theoretically saved money if you'd bought CDs at Tower Records.
Many Slashdotters are under the impression that the price fixing settlement was a win for consumers, when in reality it was a loss for independent record stores, and a win for Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who get to keep selling CDs as loss leaders without worrying about stores like Tower (which subsequently filed for bankrupcty) and other dedicated music stores from being too much of a problem. Actually, if you're a fan of the mainstream music that Wal-Mart and Best Buy dole out, then it's a win for you, but I don't count myself in that crowd.
"Pretty easy for France to do since 99% of the copyrighted material stolen is U.S."
Great point. The same thing goes for Canada: the tariff they pay on recordable media is paid only to Canadian artists. Lots of Canadian Slashdotters use the existence of the tariff as a moral free ride to pirate all the music they want, but I doubt that a significant amount of it is Canadian.
Whether we like it or not, intellectual property is the U.S.'s biggest export. The billions of dollars it brings into our economy each year plays a major factor in the quality of life that we enjoy. As somebody else alluded, one of the motivations of the French deputies who happened to show up this week might just be that it's a bijoux battle in an economic war against the US -- just as the red state pinheads stopped drinking French alcohol at around the time we invaded Iraq without their help.
Right, they're John Doe suits. That's how it works, at least here in the US. You file a John Doe to get the ball rolling to identify the Does, then you serve them once you get their identities. Quite common in online libel cases, and also a common tactic used by the RIAA.
This is all due process. For those who think it's wrong, keep in mind that we're all entitled to follow this process. There might be a day when you're in charge of a company and you think that somebody's slandering you by deliberately posting false information. It might be hurting your stock price and your ability to feed your family. If your lawyer told you "all we have is a screen name, so we can't sue them" you'd fire his ass toot suite and get a better lawyer.
"The biggest problem with "artists" is their seemingly unlimit sense of some sort of entitlement."
That's common with a lot of people, not just musicians. Ever notice that whenever there's an article on Slashdot about music piracy, it's filed under "Your Rights Online?" You can be sure that the "your" isn't addressing the composers, musicians, or record companies.
One thing that we can agree on is that artists -- just "normal" people like you and me -- are indeed entitled to protection under the law. But many people see it differently... artists are often considered second-class citizens who can be marginalized by people proudly flying the "entertainment wants to be free" banner.
"If the record labels were smart, they'd forget about the few million $s they could be making by licensing sheet music and instead be pushing free sheet music for popular songs as a way to promote their albums."
Good point, but keep in mind that the record company only has a copyright on the recording. The copyright on the words and music -- in other words, the right to print sheet music -- remain with the composer and lyricist.
That's why, when you see CD liner notes with printed lyrics, you'll see two sets of copyrights: one for the record company, and one for the publishing company managing the lyrics (and this company is often a one-person endeavor started by the lyricist themselves). The line "reprinted with permission" is often printed in the liner notes, to indicate that the record company has gotten permission from the lyricist to print them.
Slashdotters have been in a tizzy this morning with the "won't the record companies sue Google for the lyrics?", when in fact, it's two separate industries. Don't worry, guys -- the companies that own the copyrights to the lyrics are typically really small (again... often just the lyricist themselves who's incorporated for business reasons) and don't have the legal budget that the record companies do. It's only when a large music publishing agency gets involved that there are lawsuits, which is why the recent Warner-Chappell Music (which is not a record company) action against PearLyrics was so unusual.
Wow, that's really surprising! Can you provide a cite or a link? The RIAA looks after the record industry, while lyrics are the domain of the music publishing industry. They're separate revenue streams: record companies don't make money off of music publishing, and music publishing companies don't make money off of record sales.
FWIW, music publishing is usually small (often one-person!) companies and the revenues earned for the publishing rights go largely to the composers and lyricists (compared to the recording industries, where the perfomer gets a very small percentage of the sale price).
"I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but for the amount of time and money people would spend to do this, why not just rip the damn CDs yourself?"
When I was 23, I scoffed at people who actually paid a CPA to do their taxes. Why not just do my damn taxes myself? And so I did.
Now that I have more money and less time, I see the benefit that CPAs offer. I let an expert handle it. Some of my friends do their taxes themselves. Either way is perfectly acceptable; I don't judge them, and they don't judge me.
Here are some of the reasons why somebody might use a CD ripping service:
Like me, they've been buying CDs since the mid-80's, and have collections of several hundred CDs -- larger than that of the average Slashdotter.
Like me, they have a lot of money than the average Slashdotter.
Like me, they don't have a lot of time.
I've ripped most of mine with iTunes, just as you mentioned. But I can understand why this is not a worthwhile endeavor for many people.
Re:Any recording company exec went into jail - eve
on
Kazaa Owners Risk Jail
·
· Score: 1
"I would be fine sending other corparte people to jail, but how about we start with the Recording industry people that have been caught red handed and admitted guilt in price fixing multiple times, and pay for play radio..."
Price fixing multiple times? I'm aware of the thing a few years ago where Best Buy and Wal-Mart nailed Universal... have there been other times?
At any rate, price fixing is not an offense for which one can go to jail. Contempt of court, however, is. This is what we are discussing today: a possible jail term for contempt of court.
"Not to mention the price guaging they have been doing forever... CDS ALWAYS should have been cheaper than tapes, CDS always cost most than tapes...send em to jail..."
Virtually every other industry -- including the one you probably work in -- sets their pricing according to supply and demand; why can't the record industry? I wouldn't take a cassette tape for free; if somebody gave me a new release in cassette form, I would be sorely disapointed. Consumers simply value CDs more than cassettes.
"We need to stop proping up dinosaur businesses just let them fail and competitors take over..."
That's an interesting take on things. Apple's iTMS has been a runaway success. The original Napster is gone. Kazaa is on the ropes. Things don't look good for eDonkey. The open-source, "payment optional" record labels like Magnatune are barely making a blip. Looks to me like the record industry is doing fine.
"So when will Sony be going to jail for their root kit issue?"
If a court tells Sony's CEO to fix the problem, and he doesn't, and the judge finds him to be in contempt of court, then he may go to jail.
With this whole Judith Miller thing that was in the news for months, us US citizens are all too familiar with the issue of going to jail for contempt of court. Reading the discussion today is a good reminder that many Slashdotters aren't US citizens. They might be reading the phrase "contempt of court" for the very first time today.
The potential jail time is for contempt of court. To answer your question: if a Sony exec were in a similar situation (being told by the court to do something, then not doing it to the court's satisfaction), they would be subject to possible jail time for contempt of court.
"I think jailing people for such pathetic white collar crimes is ridiculous."
The potential jail time is for contempt of court. Judith Miller... Scooter Libby... if you're a US citizen, these should ring some big bells.
"Jail should be reserved for murderers, rapists and other violent types. Not people who write software for trading music on the Internet."
Agreed, but this is wholly irrelevant. I believe that judges should still have the right to send people to jail when appropriate for contempt of court, since that is what the article is talking about. Contempt of court. Not writing software. Do you have an opinion on that?
Your commentary would be dead-on if this were a criminal case. In civil cases, the standard is much lower. The applicable phrase is "balance of probabilities" or "preponderance of the evidence."
If you would like to learn more about the burdens of proof in criminal vs. civil cases, this is a good place to start.
"apple only make $0.04 per song. the other $0.96 goes to the greedy RIAA bastards."
Do you have citation for that $0.04? I was under the impression that Apple nets more on the order of $0.15 - $0.20 a song. I'm also pretty sure that the credit card card company gets a cut.
The RIAA is a trade group representing the recording industry. My guess is that record companies pay the RIAA some sort of annual membership fee, but record stores don't pay a tithe directly to the RIAA. It's a bit like saying that your medical bill goes to the AMA.
"It's possible that you are thinking of the legal system as a mechanism that is not intelligent, and can be gotten around through cleverness. That is not the case. People are involved in the system at every step, and often they are more clever than you, and have a dim view of amateurs trying to manipulate them. Basically, if you would see through such a ploy, or if you think other intelligent people would, you should expect that your opponents in a legal battle would."
Captain, that is one of the best things you have ever written. It should be required reading for all Slashdotters who wish to take part in legal-related discussions.
Judge Judy used to put it another way: "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."
Slashdot Mirror
"Mashboxx itself [mashboxx.com] is a sham RIAA front company"
Mashboxx is, of course, Wayne Rosso's company. Wayne was the pirate's best friend back when he was Grokster's CEO and when he later ran Optisoft, which provided Blubster -- he was not shy about defending the rights of P2P applications to exist, and regularly told the record companies to fuck off, in so many words. He even founded a trade group of P2P application providers called P2P United.
Providing a P2P application that's compatible with the rights and wishes of copyright holders does not make one a "sham RIAA front company." Yeah, yeah, all those greedy copyright holders are the enemy, and entertainment wants to be free, and all that, but Wayne saw the writing on the wall. At least he's having some measure of success -- remember when Kazaa printed those full-page newspaper ads to try to get the record company's cooperation in migrating to a permission-based P2P network? Kazaa wasn't a "sham RIAA front company," either.
For years, Mr. Rosso was trying to separate the concept of P2P (highly efficient file sharing) from the current primary application of P2P (piracy); now he's doing something about it.
"Why not support for PostgreSQL? How hard can it possibly to write code that supports more then DB? It's unbelievable that almost no blogging software supports a real RDBM."
WordPress is open source. This means that if you like, you can contribute by making the improvements yourself. That's how open source software tends to be improved... each contributor adds the features that they would like to see.
At the very least, you should give it a try. If you're right, and adding PostGRE is the trivial task that you imply, then it should be a snap, and WordPress will be the better for it. If it turns out to be a little too daunting, then you'll have answered your own question of why it hasn't yet been done.
"And copyright holders are, after all, part of those people you're talking about. It would be very shortsighted of us to ignore their needs since they create things that we want!"
Good point. Let's also keep in mind that musicians, authors, and poets traditionally make the lowest average income of any profession. How sad that many people want to marginalize them into oblivion. "I'll make copies of your work for free, and you'll have to fend for yourself by doing concerts and live readings -- well, good luck with that!" isn't something I would want to hear. If I rely on the fruits of my labor to feed my family, let me make the choice of whether I want to give it away, OK?
Sadly, a majority with technology will always win against a small group that has something that the bigger group wants. For an example, look around and tell me how many American Indians you see. Our ancestors didn't kill them off because our ancestors were evil -- it's simply human nature that they wanted what the Indians had, so they rationalized ways to do it. Again, no rights or wrongs here... just human nature. You see this today when you read comments from Slashdotters who defend file sharing as some sort of civil disobedience. I guess there's no time to worry about how the songwriter's going to pay the rent, when one is busy making room for one's self up on that pedestal along with, say, Rosa Parks.
"Remember, this is a war of rights... civil disobedience is a way of showing your discontentment with a law."
No, you just want some free tunes, and you enjoy downloading music and sharing it with others so they don't have to pay for it, either. There's nothing wrong with (and I mean this in a nice way) being a cheapskate, or wanting to save a buck or two. No need to compare your actions to those of Emmett Till, Lamar Smith, Rosa Parks et al.
"How and why is downloading something illegal? Wouldn't distribution be illegal because it's copyright infringement? But how or why is downloading be illegal?"
You make a very good point, but the RIAA found her because her PC was running Kazaa and sharing a whole bunch of MP3 files.
They are speaking of intellectual property in general, not the music industry in particular. The US also exports a lot of movies and software. I don't know how much software and DVD content is pirated in Russia, but it's probably significant as well. This would put your calculation off by a significant amount.
"I would also consider it good samaritan-ship to be generous and share music, isn't that what they teach us to do in school? To share? It's not as if a bucaneer would ripping it directly off their site w/o permission, they'd really only be sharing music with their friends?"
Yes -- please do share the music of those musicians, authors and programmers who want you to share their work... and there are plenty of them. There's a ton of Creative Commons, shareware, freeware, and public domain media out there. Otherwise, another concept you may have learned in school applies: treat others as you would like to be treated. This is often called the "golden rule."
"Is their really any difference between lending a CD to friend and sharing music via online?"
Yes: volume. Ripping a CD and putting it into your Kazaa directory creates the potential for it to be on 10,000 other people's hard drives in a matter of days. I can guess that you would never pirate something as an alternative to buying it (you probably download something, listen to it, and buy a copy if you like it), but, sadly, many people use P2P to save money. And, while I'm sure we all agree that the real artists have day jobs, that trying to make money in music is evil and sinful and wrong, etc. etc., the fact remains that there are many artists, writers, composers, software engineers and the like who rely on the sale of their work to feed their families.
I'm not sure how you read that into my post. I am stating a fact: whether we like it or not, our country makes a hell of a lot of money on intellectual property. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is, as the math texts say, an exercise left to the reader.
The countries that are not signatories to the Berne Convention do not generally have what I consider to be "good" governments, either. If I were to try to come up with a list of five countries in the world that I consider to have "good" governments (and this would be difficult), all of them happen to be signatories.
For reference, the latest list of non-signatories that I could find is: Afghanistan, Bhutan, Ethiopia, Iran, Iraq, Nepal, Oman, San Marino, Tonga and Yemen. I would not want to live in any of these countries, and the ability to pirate music to my heart's content would not make up for the other issues. Others may feel differently.
"I don't know which is sadder, that the RIAA has such influence over Congress, or that this might be true."
It's extremely true -- intellectual property is one of the US's biggest exports. This is quite clear to people who've left the US and seen the impact of US culture. American movies are popular worldwide, American pop stars are popular all over, and Windows is the #1 operating system worldwide. The taxes paid on the revenue earned by US producers of intellectual property are a major reason that we enjoy the quality of life that we do.
Sorry to have to break the news to you.
"But piracy? Close the borders, its war!"
Yes, you are correct. Whether we like it or not, intellectual property is one of the USA's biggest exports, if not the biggest export. It's one of the reasons why we're one of the richest nations on the planet, and it's a major factor in the quality of life we enjoy. It's no coincidence that countries which don't pay much bother to the Berne Convention and other similar international agreements are by and large shitty places to live.
"Musicians don't really need traditional publishing and distribution anymore. Once the practice of developing a fanbase and breaking bigtime really takes off, the dinosaurs will die. And they know it, btw."
The first part of your post was dead-on accurate, but you lost me on the last part. You see, folks have been saying (in so many words) "The record companies are going to be gone once musicians start using this Internet thing to their advantage" for more than five years now. It was a popular rallying cry back when the original Napster was big.
The problem is this: the iTMS is a runaway success. The record companies (perhaps due to this collusion) are laughing all the way to the bank. "Open source" record labels like Magnatune, which fit many Slashdotters' perceptions of the future of music, are struggling. It seems that the record companies are also using the Internet to their advantage, and it does seem to be the case that a $5,000 home studio and a web site just doesn't seem to be a direct, drop-in replacement for a smoothly operating marketing and distribution machine, and a team of experts who understand the whole marketing and promotion thing -- and who charge for their expertise by taking 80% of the wholesale price of the CD or the downloadable track.
I'm sure you know all this -- my point isn't to argue with you. My question is this: if this hasn't happened yet, when will it happen? When will people realize that iTunes, Yahoo! Music, Napster et al. suck, and start buying music from artists without benefit of a recording contract in volumes that are worth discussing? Five years? Ten? Twenty?
Right; that judgement was a win for Wal-Mart and Best Buy. Wal-Mart and Best Buy went to the government when Universal was handing out program money (funds for newspaper advertisements and the like) to Tower Records and TWE in return for setting MAPs (minimum advertised prices). The only result was that the record companies ended their MAP programs. You only theoretically saved money if you'd bought CDs at Tower Records.
Many Slashdotters are under the impression that the price fixing settlement was a win for consumers, when in reality it was a loss for independent record stores, and a win for Wal-Mart and Best Buy, who get to keep selling CDs as loss leaders without worrying about stores like Tower (which subsequently filed for bankrupcty) and other dedicated music stores from being too much of a problem. Actually, if you're a fan of the mainstream music that Wal-Mart and Best Buy dole out, then it's a win for you, but I don't count myself in that crowd.
"Pretty easy for France to do since 99% of the copyrighted material stolen is U.S."
Great point. The same thing goes for Canada: the tariff they pay on recordable media is paid only to Canadian artists. Lots of Canadian Slashdotters use the existence of the tariff as a moral free ride to pirate all the music they want, but I doubt that a significant amount of it is Canadian.
Whether we like it or not, intellectual property is the U.S.'s biggest export. The billions of dollars it brings into our economy each year plays a major factor in the quality of life that we enjoy. As somebody else alluded, one of the motivations of the French deputies who happened to show up this week might just be that it's a bijoux battle in an economic war against the US -- just as the red state pinheads stopped drinking French alcohol at around the time we invaded Iraq without their help.
Right, they're John Doe suits. That's how it works, at least here in the US. You file a John Doe to get the ball rolling to identify the Does, then you serve them once you get their identities. Quite common in online libel cases, and also a common tactic used by the RIAA.
This is all due process. For those who think it's wrong, keep in mind that we're all entitled to follow this process. There might be a day when you're in charge of a company and you think that somebody's slandering you by deliberately posting false information. It might be hurting your stock price and your ability to feed your family. If your lawyer told you "all we have is a screen name, so we can't sue them" you'd fire his ass toot suite and get a better lawyer.
"The biggest problem with "artists" is their seemingly unlimit sense of some sort of entitlement."
That's common with a lot of people, not just musicians. Ever notice that whenever there's an article on Slashdot about music piracy, it's filed under "Your Rights Online?" You can be sure that the "your" isn't addressing the composers, musicians, or record companies.
One thing that we can agree on is that artists -- just "normal" people like you and me -- are indeed entitled to protection under the law. But many people see it differently... artists are often considered second-class citizens who can be marginalized by people proudly flying the "entertainment wants to be free" banner.
"If the record labels were smart, they'd forget about the few million $s they could be making by licensing sheet music and instead be pushing free sheet music for popular songs as a way to promote their albums."
Good point, but keep in mind that the record company only has a copyright on the recording. The copyright on the words and music -- in other words, the right to print sheet music -- remain with the composer and lyricist.
That's why, when you see CD liner notes with printed lyrics, you'll see two sets of copyrights: one for the record company, and one for the publishing company managing the lyrics (and this company is often a one-person endeavor started by the lyricist themselves). The line "reprinted with permission" is often printed in the liner notes, to indicate that the record company has gotten permission from the lyricist to print them.
Slashdotters have been in a tizzy this morning with the "won't the record companies sue Google for the lyrics?", when in fact, it's two separate industries. Don't worry, guys -- the companies that own the copyrights to the lyrics are typically really small (again... often just the lyricist themselves who's incorporated for business reasons) and don't have the legal budget that the record companies do. It's only when a large music publishing agency gets involved that there are lawsuits, which is why the recent Warner-Chappell Music (which is not a record company) action against PearLyrics was so unusual.
"Yeah, along with any number of other sites."
Wow, that's really surprising! Can you provide a cite or a link? The RIAA looks after the record industry, while lyrics are the domain of the music publishing industry. They're separate revenue streams: record companies don't make money off of music publishing, and music publishing companies don't make money off of record sales.
FWIW, music publishing is usually small (often one-person!) companies and the revenues earned for the publishing rights go largely to the composers and lyricists (compared to the recording industries, where the perfomer gets a very small percentage of the sale price).
"I'm sorry if this sounds like flamebait, but for the amount of time and money people would spend to do this, why not just rip the damn CDs yourself?"
When I was 23, I scoffed at people who actually paid a CPA to do their taxes. Why not just do my damn taxes myself? And so I did.
Now that I have more money and less time, I see the benefit that CPAs offer. I let an expert handle it. Some of my friends do their taxes themselves. Either way is perfectly acceptable; I don't judge them, and they don't judge me.
Here are some of the reasons why somebody might use a CD ripping service:
I've ripped most of mine with iTunes, just as you mentioned. But I can understand why this is not a worthwhile endeavor for many people.
"I would be fine sending other corparte people to jail, but how about we start with the Recording industry people that have been caught red handed and admitted guilt in price fixing multiple times, and pay for play radio..."
Price fixing multiple times? I'm aware of the thing a few years ago where Best Buy and Wal-Mart nailed Universal... have there been other times?
At any rate, price fixing is not an offense for which one can go to jail. Contempt of court, however, is. This is what we are discussing today: a possible jail term for contempt of court.
"Not to mention the price guaging they have been doing forever... CDS ALWAYS should have been cheaper than tapes, CDS always cost most than tapes...send em to jail..."
Virtually every other industry -- including the one you probably work in -- sets their pricing according to supply and demand; why can't the record industry? I wouldn't take a cassette tape for free; if somebody gave me a new release in cassette form, I would be sorely disapointed. Consumers simply value CDs more than cassettes.
"We need to stop proping up dinosaur businesses just let them fail and competitors take over..."
That's an interesting take on things. Apple's iTMS has been a runaway success. The original Napster is gone. Kazaa is on the ropes. Things don't look good for eDonkey. The open-source, "payment optional" record labels like Magnatune are barely making a blip. Looks to me like the record industry is doing fine.
"So when will Sony be going to jail for their root kit issue?"
If a court tells Sony's CEO to fix the problem, and he doesn't, and the judge finds him to be in contempt of court, then he may go to jail.
With this whole Judith Miller thing that was in the news for months, us US citizens are all too familiar with the issue of going to jail for contempt of court. Reading the discussion today is a good reminder that many Slashdotters aren't US citizens. They might be reading the phrase "contempt of court" for the very first time today.
"But jailing someone for stealing a digital 'copy' where it doesn't hurt anyone is ridiculous."
True, but irrelevant. The article in the summary is referring to possible jail time for contempt of court.
The potential jail time is for contempt of court. To answer your question: if a Sony exec were in a similar situation (being told by the court to do something, then not doing it to the court's satisfaction), they would be subject to possible jail time for contempt of court.
The Wikipedia article on contempt of court has more information.
"I think jailing people for such pathetic white collar crimes is ridiculous."
The potential jail time is for contempt of court. Judith Miller... Scooter Libby... if you're a US citizen, these should ring some big bells.
"Jail should be reserved for murderers, rapists and other violent types. Not people who write software for trading music on the Internet."
Agreed, but this is wholly irrelevant. I believe that judges should still have the right to send people to jail when appropriate for contempt of court, since that is what the article is talking about. Contempt of court. Not writing software. Do you have an opinion on that?
Your commentary would be dead-on if this were a criminal case. In civil cases, the standard is much lower. The applicable phrase is "balance of probabilities" or "preponderance of the evidence."
If you would like to learn more about the burdens of proof in criminal vs. civil cases, this is a good place to start.
"apple only make $0.04 per song. the other $0.96 goes to the greedy RIAA bastards."
Do you have citation for that $0.04? I was under the impression that Apple nets more on the order of $0.15 - $0.20 a song. I'm also pretty sure that the credit card card company gets a cut.
The RIAA is a trade group representing the recording industry. My guess is that record companies pay the RIAA some sort of annual membership fee, but record stores don't pay a tithe directly to the RIAA. It's a bit like saying that your medical bill goes to the AMA.
Captain, that is one of the best things you have ever written. It should be required reading for all Slashdotters who wish to take part in legal-related discussions.
Judge Judy used to put it another way: "Don't piss on my leg and tell me it's raining."