"Records companies also have the obligation to not violate the law, which they flaut regularly. The RIAA has been repeatedly found guilty of anti-compentitive monopoly practices, such as price fixing. They don't stop the behaviour, they just keep paying the fines."
Very interesting -- I didn't know that! Can you please provide a citation for that? I am aware of one price fixing settlement a few years back. Here's what happened:
Best Buy and Wal-Mart started selling CDs at or below cost, as a "loss leader" to get people into the stores.
This was very upsetting to some specialty realtors (Tower Records, TWE, and one which I can't recall). Unlike Wal-Mart and Best Buy, the specialty stores didn't have an acre of high-margin electronics or children's clothes to make up the difference.
Tower and TWE went to the record companies for help. The record companies set up a MAP ("minimum advertised price") co-op advertising program in which the labels would help pay for newspaper ads if if Tower, et al. didn't advertise below a certain price. (In case this sounds familiar... lots of industries have MAP programs. Ever hear words like "price too low to mention" on radio spots? That's likely a MAP in effect.)
Wal-Mart and Best Buy complained to the goverment.
The government spanked the record companies and prevented them from doing MAPs.
Tower Records subsequently filed for bankrupcty.
The price-fixing suit was a win for the Wal-Marts and Best Buys of the world. It was a loss for indie stores, and specialty stores like Tower Records. If you like Wal-Mart and their crappy selection of music, then great, but I personally don't mind shopping in indie stores even if I might pay a buck or two more, just so I can avoid the Wal-Mart experience. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with MAP programs -- lots of other industries still use them. This was the case of Wal-Mart throwing their power around to put smaller retailers out of business.
Anyway, back to your statement that this has happened multiple times. Can you give me another example?
"The indie labels don't sell as many CD's, so their costs are higher. They're also businesses, so they charge what they can get away with."
Hmm... being a business and charging what they can get away with... pardon me if I'm overzealously connecting dots for you, but are you saying that indie labels are just as evil?
"Many people will buy the indie label just because it isn't an RIAA affiliate. But aside from that, most indie label don't charge that much for their CD's. Most store will mark up their CD's to the same prices as RIAA product albums and just make more money."
Interesting -- can you give me an example? What price does the RIAA sell into distribution for, vs. the indies?
"Do some research of your own and you'll see that it's trivial to buy CD's for low prices on independant labels or self published artists."
Self-published is another thing, but my experience doesn't match yours on the indie vs. major prices -- in fact, it's the opposite. The crappy stuff from the Brittanies of the world is often $12 or $13 while the decent acts on smaller labels are a few bucks more.
"The RIAA (and whatever the fuck the Austrialian equivalent is) are screwing artists out of a good living..."
I don't understand what you mean. If this is the case, why do people keep signing recording contracts?
"...overcharging for thier product by maintaining an artifical lock on distribution..."
There's something I've always wondered; maybe you can explain it since you know so much about the record industry. There are relatively few labels that belong to the RIAA, but there are thousands of thousands of indie labels. Why is it that indie CDs cost about the same as CDs from RIAA labels? I can understand if CDs could be sold profitably for five bucks and the big RIAA labels formed a cartel that agreed to sell them at twelve bucks, but if that's the case, why doesn't one of the indie labels start selling CDs for five bucks? All it would take is one... then the rest would follow... then the RIAA labels would have to lower their prices.
Is it that all the indie labels are in on the conspiracy as well?
"and discouraging new/interesting music because having just a few big name bands is more profitable."
I've lost you there. Aren't record companies in business to make money? It's well and good for us to tell the record companies that they should instead be concentrating more on unprofitable bands, but it is they, not we, who are responsible to their employees.
"Your comparison isn't valid."
I tend to think that I shouldn't violate somebody's rights no matter what impression I might have of their business model, and I also think that two wrongs don't make a right. Do you disagree?
" Yep, just because you can use it to pirate something doesn't mean its illegal, and the recording industry can't grasp that."
Why do you say that? They went after the tracker site with the pirated material, not the BitTorrent technology itself, not the concept behind P2P, not Bram. In the meantime, tracker sites that take the care to offer only permission-based torrents are not being hassled because they are doing nothing wrong. It seems like the recording industry gets the distinction just fine, and that you are employing a straw man.
Likewise, when the police bust a child pornographer, they are nailing the person, and not the art of photogaphy as a whole, and not the technology of photons hitting a CCD sensor.
"Oh no, an ISP that allows users to run Bittorrent on its service!?! Kill it quickly Michael!"
They went a bit farther than that; they were running a torrent site exclusively for their subscribers. This wasn't the case of some subscriber running a pirate torrent site unbeknownst to the ISP.
"This has bugger all to do with catching 'offending' P2P/BitTorrent end users, and everything to do with the MIPI ramping up the FUD so as to create an atmosphere of fear of litigation amongst ISP's, driving a push towards ISP's 'voluntarily' screwing down what end users do on the network. i.e. doing the MIPI's job for them. Fuck using current legislation which is wholly appropriate - too much trouble to tag individuals by due process: might as well scare the shit out of ISP's with litigious fear mongering and close-to-libelous PR (I'd love to see that tested in a court of law)."
It's important to note that the ISP itself was running the torrent site that specialized in pirated material. This is not an instance where the ISP was raided because of what its subscribers were doing unbeknownst to the ISP.
"The music industry is being greedy, not logical when they determine their pricing right now."
FWIW, the record industry gets by on net margins similar to those made on computer periperhals. These margins are much lower than what you pay for clothing and groceries. If you were to graph net margins by industry, the record industry would be in the lower 50%.
"We we already burned on the change from cassettes to CD which were going to be much cheaper once they were adopted."
When CDs were launched in the early 80's, prices of $18 were common. If prices hadn't gone down, CDs would be $31 today.
"In real manufacturing, real market forces cut the margins down, but with the recording industry prices are artifically set by the RIAA"
As you know, there are thousands of indie labels that don't belong to the RIAA. If CDs really could be sold for, say, $8.00 at a profit, why aren't we seeing that? All it would take would be for one non-RIAA label to break ranks, and the rest would follow. Do you know why this is the case? Is it a conspiracy that goes way beyond the RIAA, and is the reality that all of the indie labels are working in concert?
"If the recording idustry took an honest look at their options this 5 cents/download option would make them huge amounts of money and save them boatloads on legal fees and bribes for government officials."
I am not sure about that. For instance, by law, compulsory royalties paid to publishers for covers are around $0.08 a track. It's difficult to make money selling a track for $0.05 when you must pay $0.08 to the songwriter. This is not something that can be made up in volume. I guess we could change the laws to allow record companies pay songwriters less, but songwriting is already generally a sucky business to be in.
"Yeah, that's impossible! You should call the CEO of allofmp3.com tell him that."
AllofMP3 is able to do it because they don't pay the artists or labels. The production costs are covered by somebody else and they're not reimbursed through sales.
"What I am saying is that so many people look at the industry and conclude that executives should be payed less and artists more. Why not simply pay executives less and keep paying the artists the same? Clearly they either see the paycheque as large enough or they find other non-monetary values in creating the music."
Hmmm. My only first-hand experience here was a guy I knew who owned an indie label. He paid himself $20K a year and worked long days and long nights. He had a staff of about five people, and when sales were poor, he had to fire his friends. There are thousands of other indie labels and I'm sure many of them have similar stories.
I have no doubt that the executives at the most successful record companies are paid quite highly, but I don't know if the highest-salaried people in the record industry make more, on average, than the highest-salaried people in the computer industry or any other industry. I am not referring simply to the standouts like Fiorina or Gates; many of the executives in the computer industry with whom I deal with are in the million buck club.
Companies generally pay their executives what they're seen as worth. There are lots of stories of spectacular blunders (such as Fiorina), but when a board elects to pay a CEO $HIGH_AMOUNT, it's because they believe it's a good return on their investment.
"Yes. But I bet my derrier some of those employees from record companies make a heck of a lot more money than many of the IT folks working their hump off to make a living, even though an average IT person is probably more educated."
You are correct. Some record company employees make money than some IT folks. It is also correct to say that some IT folks make more money than some record company employees.
"People in the record industry are generally better paid than people in the IT industry" is probably not an accurate statement. My guess is that record companies pay their IT guys (as well as their designers, their marketers, their salespeople, and their janitorial staff) the going market rate.
"Jeesh, I know a lot of IT Managers (Director and above) that can't afford a decent vacation, even less a 5 carat ring."
The only president of a record label I've ever med paid himself $20,000 a year. He had five employees, and when his sales dropped, he had to fire his friends. I would bet that the average indie label has fewer than 15 employees.
"However, I can't also conceive giving my hard earned money to clowns like P. Diddy."
I agree. I'm not a huge fan of his music. I'm sure that you and I address this problem by not buying or even downloading his music. However, many Slashdotters take the position of "I don't like P. Diddy's { music | lifestyle | talent-to-income ratio } so thus I am fully justified in pirating his music." These people suck. It's okay to simply admit that you like getting something for nothing, rather than turning piracy into some sort of social cause on the Montgomery freedom march.
"Likewise, the vast majority of artists should not earn a handsome living from their craft. I'm not saying that the right artists are getting the money right now (according to my tastes nor my demands for quality and originality), simply that there is nothing strange about the fact that the vast majority of a profession is not rock-star-rich."
Agreed 100%. You and I understand that, but it's lost on much of the "music must be free" crowd. "Artists and musicians have too much money" is an excellent rationalization for piracy, or even for pricing tracks at $0.05, but it doesn't mesh with reality.
" 'artists' like Lipsychson making millions. Record company execs making...millions. IT pros making...a lot less than that. Now ask yourself who can 'suck it up' the most of those groups."
Bad analogy. The executives at Apple (or whomever is paying the IT guys) make millions -- the executives in any large industry make quite a bit of money. The vast majorify of people who work in the record industry (including the "executives" at some indie labels I've met), just as the vast majority of people who work in the IT field, work paycheck-to-paycheck.
Likewise, the vast majority of artists do not earn a handsome living from their craft. "Let's help ourselves to music for free" goes down a lot smoother if you believe that everybody who contributed to the music is a millionaire, but it's simply not true.
"So, Apple now has to run power-hungry servers with a large staff of IT guys making sure they're patched and running correctly."
I think the general consensus here is "artists and record companies should stop being so greedy." In the spirit of this goal to drive music to $0.05, perhaps IT guys should stop being greedy as well, and just work for the pure joy of providing music, rather than for a salary.
Yes, I know, IT guys have to pay rent or mortgage and support families. Yet artists and employees of record companies do, too. If they can suck it up in the new Slashdot world music order, so can IT professionals.
"Yes, guys and gals, it's money. Money, money, money, money."
Was anybody under the understanding that the music industry was anything but a for-profit business?
Finding that point on the supply/demand curve where you make the most money is a business fundamental. Every business does this, from one-person operations to multinationals. Even the folks at Red Hat and Apple and other companies that Slashdotters love have done this -- it's all about "money money money" to them, too.
"This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version)."
Very well put. The MPAA, through its actions so far with regard to its approach toward BitTorrent, shows that they understand the difference between BitTorrent itself, the concept of P2P itself, and the use of BitTorrent for piracy. Interestingly enough, this time it's many Slashdotters who don't seem to understand the difference. The MPAA is finally being sensible in its approach, but as long as Slashdotters continue to confuse takedowns of pirate sites with an attack on P2P itself, we are hurting our own efforts to make the general public understand that P2P can be used responsibly.
To draw an analogy, when the government goes after a child pornographer, I think most Slashdotters would understand that this is an attack on the child pornographer, and not an attack on Nikon, the art of photography, or the technology of photons hitting a CCD sensor.
"In a shocker announcement, Common Sense LLC announced today that HTTP, FTP, TELNET, email and other protocols can also be used for piracy. MPAA has already announced it plans to sue the creators and maintainers of such protocols and its clients. Other associations are expected to follow suit shortly."
The MPAA has taken down Torrent sites that specialize in pirated material. They are not going after BitTorrent itself, or sites like the ones mentioned in TFA that provide only Torrents to content released with the creator's permission. In other words, they're finally using some sense.
A more fitting analogy would be the MPAA going after a site that offers pirated material using the HTTP, FTP or telnet protocols. This != an attack on the HTTP/FTP/telnet protocols themselves.
Likewise, when the cops bust child pornographers, this should not be misrepresented as an attack on photography itself, or an attack on the technology of photons hitting CCD sensors.
This is a fundamental point to understand if you want to fight for your rights to use P2P.
"What I want to see is for this to have no biases except possibly to comply with hate crime legislation and to suitably screen access to some items for over 18s only. I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage."
Huh? It's their site; they can do what they like. It's trivially easy to set up a web page nowadays. The most productive solution to your dilemma is not to try to tell them what to do, but instead to set up your own site. Want a right-wing site featuring Torrents of content released with the creators' permission? Start your own!
"Now the music and movie businesses of the world can go to Torrentacracy and say,"See, if they can do it right, why can't you?""
Exactly. They've shown that it's really not hard at all to operate a Torrent site in a responsible manner. The operators of these sites showed personal responsibility and respect for creators' rights.
Personal responsibility and respect for others are qualities which I think are underrated, particularly on Slashdot.
As long as we continue to equate P2P and piracy, then the attacks on P2P will go on. The MPAA understands the difference between legitimate Torrent sites (those that post Torrents to content released with the creators' permission) and sites set up primarily for piracy. Once we understand this difference as well, then we can choose our battle. What are we really fighting for -- the survival of P2P, or the legitimacy of piracy? I think the first one is much easier to win, and embracing P2P technology that respects creators' rights is the way to do that.
"It's not about attacks against pirates, it's against legal attacks against the program creators (ie. holding the owners of a p2p network responsible for its users)."
Huh? The MPAA has gone after the pirate sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova. They are not going after the sites that take the care to provide only torrents of material released with the creators' permission. They are not going after Bram. They are not trying to stop BitTorrent from being distributed.
You may be thinking of MGM v. Grokster, in which MGM is trying to shut down Grokster -- not the concept of P2P. MGM's argument is that Grokster's business model is to make money by providing access to pirated material. On this point, they're correct.
" I think the point is that these sites are unquestionably legal, even to boneheaded organizations like the MPAA. (It's necessary to make things very, very simple such that they can understand.)"
I don't think this explanation is necessary to the MPAA or anybody else. The MPAA has taken down the Torrent sites that trafficked largely in pirated material, but they are ignoring the legal sites.
The confusion might lie in some of the responses to the takedowns of the pirate sites. Remember how Lokitorrent was wrapping themselves in the "defend P2P!" cloak? That was utter nonsense; the MPAA was going after Lokitorrent; not BitTorrent or P2P. Likewise, "MPAA v. Grokster" is the MPAA's attempt to put Grokster out of business, but many Slashdotters liked to take the position that the MPAA was trying to shut down P2P itself. This is what is known as a straw man fallacy.
I think that this position will ultimately hurt P2P's chances of survival. As long as Slashdotters and others continue to equate Lokitorrent and other pirate sites with P2P itself, P2P will continue to be stained by folks like Loki who were using it to make money off of piracy. This is fighting for a short-term goal (getting sympathy for Lokitorrent) at the expense of the long-term goal (making the public at large understand that P2P is a great technology that can be used in a responsible manner that respects creators' rights).
This is the time to promote and use Torrent sites that provide only material distributed with the creators' permission. It isn't the time to act like martyrs and proclaim the death of P2P each time a pirate gets nailed.
Absolutely. There are plenty of absolutely legal places to get free or low-cost music with the permission of the artist.
Slashdotters often like to proclaim that free distribution by self-produced artists is the future of the music industry, but in order for that future to happen, we have to make it happen. Support those brave souls who choose to make their work available for free. If somebody would rather sell their work, then don't buy it... but don't pirate it, either.
"There is no technical reason we haven't been able to purchase a DVD with 4.6 gigabytes of mp3's which would pretty much cover any entire genre."
You can probably find these in China.
"The problem is they would want to charge $110 for a dvd like that and people are not going to pay that much for one disk which won't be replaced when they go bad."
Boxed sets do a steady but consistent business. Once consumer acceptance of DVD Audio has hit that point, I think we'll see collections released on one DVD, along with the requisite booklets and other goodies that come with such sets. You raise a good point about consumer fears of buying one piece of media with a lot of data.
"When you add things like magnatune.com (some darn good music there by the way and ALL legal) into the mix, I cannot see how they will be able to sustain their prices."
You raise another great point. Magnatune is a perfect example of what many Slashdotters would consider to be how music should be produced and sold -- yet it's flailing, while Apple has solds tens of millions of songs. Selling music online, rather than giving it away and relying on the honor system, still appears to be viable.
"In my view, allofmp3.com is charging a fair price for the content."
I disagree. I believe that rightsholders should be compensated for their efforts, and that we should respect their rights. That is fair. iTunes may pay $0.15 to the artist per track, but 1,000 of those tracks will pay for groceries for a month, and 10,000 will pay the rent.
"Note that, at least in the segments of the law you pasted, copyright law only applies to "material objects". I don't think a collection of numbers (which is what a mp3 file is) counts as a material object."
That is the best rationalization for piracy ever. No, really. You should put that on a t-shirt or something.
"The only different from my point of view is that at least allofmp3.com aren't gouging their customers."
This is a suitable position to take in an ideal world where artists are all well off and don't really need your money.
iTunes may pay the artist only $0.10 or $0.20 per track, but a thousand of those tracks buys groceries for the month. Ten thousand pays the rent. Many artists do rely on royalty payments, as small as they are, to survive.
" iTunes doesn't pay the artists much, and 'a little' is practically the same as 'none at all' " is not a valid rationalization for using AllOfMP3 in lieu of iTunes.
However, if you are trying to find musicians who don't want royalty payments (because they already have enough money, or because they have a day job, or whatever) there are plenty of resources for permission-based free music downloads. There's no need to violate somebody's rights to get free music. Why not support them, instead?
"If we let our rights get eroded away this is what is going to happen."
Interesting choice of words. If this were, say, 1920 and an employee of a company were to say inappropriate things in an ad in the New York Times, they'd be liable to be fired then, too.
"IANAL, but I suspect that those charges are a little more complicated than your suggesting. For example, if I ran a hotel and surmised that, of course, some people staying there are probably involved in prostitution, but didn't actively try to figure out who and kick them out, I don't believe I'd be charged with anything. If I ran a matchmaking service or provided a special lounge for prostitutes and their johns to meet, then I'd be making a positive action, which would change things considerably."
You bring up a good point. MGM is essentially arguing that Grokster is more like the latter, than the former, since it's trivial for them to observe that the majority of their traffic is unauthorized.
"Likewise, if I ran an anonymous FTP and I found occasional kiddie porn on my server (remember, posted anonymously) and erased it ASAP without contacting the authorities, I suspect I wouldn't be charged with anything. It wouldn't then be my legal responsibility to turn off all of my servers on the basis that they have been used in the past for illegal purposes and could be used that way again in the future. If I catered specifically to kiddie-porn viewers, or knowingly left it up on the server, I would, at that point, be knowingly publishing kiddie porn on the net, which is a positive action."
Unfortunately I have first-hand experience here; I got an education in the law a few years back when a user uploaded kiddie porn to one of my sites. For several years now (since the passing of either the COPA or the COPPA, I'm not sure), if you're a site operator and you discover child pornography on your server, you are legally required to notify the FBI and turn over log info. You're correct from a practical standpoint that if you deleted it immediately, you would likely not be charged because there would be little way for the FBI to know what transpired, but if they were to find out and they had the werewithal, the US government has the legal grounds to prosecute, even in the absence of "positive action" as you define it. The richteousness of such a law was recently the subject of heated debate on/. with the posting of an article regarding Australia's recent move to add a similar law.
Slashdot Mirror
"Records companies also have the obligation to not violate the law, which they flaut regularly. The RIAA has been repeatedly found guilty of anti-compentitive monopoly practices, such as price fixing. They don't stop the behaviour, they just keep paying the fines."
Very interesting -- I didn't know that! Can you please provide a citation for that? I am aware of one price fixing settlement a few years back. Here's what happened:
The price-fixing suit was a win for the Wal-Marts and Best Buys of the world. It was a loss for indie stores, and specialty stores like Tower Records. If you like Wal-Mart and their crappy selection of music, then great, but I personally don't mind shopping in indie stores even if I might pay a buck or two more, just so I can avoid the Wal-Mart experience. Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with MAP programs -- lots of other industries still use them. This was the case of Wal-Mart throwing their power around to put smaller retailers out of business.
Anyway, back to your statement that this has happened multiple times. Can you give me another example?
"The indie labels don't sell as many CD's, so their costs are higher. They're also businesses, so they charge what they can get away with."
Hmm... being a business and charging what they can get away with... pardon me if I'm overzealously connecting dots for you, but are you saying that indie labels are just as evil?
"Many people will buy the indie label just because it isn't an RIAA affiliate. But aside from that, most indie label don't charge that much for their CD's. Most store will mark up their CD's to the same prices as RIAA product albums and just make more money."
Interesting -- can you give me an example? What price does the RIAA sell into distribution for, vs. the indies?
"Do some research of your own and you'll see that it's trivial to buy CD's for low prices on independant labels or self published artists."
Self-published is another thing, but my experience doesn't match yours on the indie vs. major prices -- in fact, it's the opposite. The crappy stuff from the Brittanies of the world is often $12 or $13 while the decent acts on smaller labels are a few bucks more.
"The RIAA (and whatever the fuck the Austrialian equivalent is) are screwing artists out of a good living..."
I don't understand what you mean. If this is the case, why do people keep signing recording contracts?
"...overcharging for thier product by maintaining an artifical lock on distribution..."
There's something I've always wondered; maybe you can explain it since you know so much about the record industry. There are relatively few labels that belong to the RIAA, but there are thousands of thousands of indie labels. Why is it that indie CDs cost about the same as CDs from RIAA labels? I can understand if CDs could be sold profitably for five bucks and the big RIAA labels formed a cartel that agreed to sell them at twelve bucks, but if that's the case, why doesn't one of the indie labels start selling CDs for five bucks? All it would take is one... then the rest would follow... then the RIAA labels would have to lower their prices.
Is it that all the indie labels are in on the conspiracy as well?
"and discouraging new/interesting music because having just a few big name bands is more profitable."
I've lost you there. Aren't record companies in business to make money? It's well and good for us to tell the record companies that they should instead be concentrating more on unprofitable bands, but it is they, not we, who are responsible to their employees.
"Your comparison isn't valid."
I tend to think that I shouldn't violate somebody's rights no matter what impression I might have of their business model, and I also think that two wrongs don't make a right. Do you disagree?
" Yep, just because you can use it to pirate something doesn't mean its illegal, and the recording industry can't grasp that."
Why do you say that? They went after the tracker site with the pirated material, not the BitTorrent technology itself, not the concept behind P2P, not Bram. In the meantime, tracker sites that take the care to offer only permission-based torrents are not being hassled because they are doing nothing wrong. It seems like the recording industry gets the distinction just fine, and that you are employing a straw man.
Likewise, when the police bust a child pornographer, they are nailing the person, and not the art of photogaphy as a whole, and not the technology of photons hitting a CCD sensor.
"Oh no, an ISP that allows users to run Bittorrent on its service!?! Kill it quickly Michael!"
They went a bit farther than that; they were running a torrent site exclusively for their subscribers. This wasn't the case of some subscriber running a pirate torrent site unbeknownst to the ISP.
"This has bugger all to do with catching 'offending' P2P/BitTorrent end users, and everything to do with the MIPI ramping up the FUD so as to create an atmosphere of fear of litigation amongst ISP's, driving a push towards ISP's 'voluntarily' screwing down what end users do on the network. i.e. doing the MIPI's job for them. Fuck using current legislation which is wholly appropriate - too much trouble to tag individuals by due process: might as well scare the shit out of ISP's with litigious fear mongering and close-to-libelous PR (I'd love to see that tested in a court of law)."
It's important to note that the ISP itself was running the torrent site that specialized in pirated material. This is not an instance where the ISP was raided because of what its subscribers were doing unbeknownst to the ISP.
"The music industry is being greedy, not logical when they determine their pricing right now."
FWIW, the record industry gets by on net margins similar to those made on computer periperhals. These margins are much lower than what you pay for clothing and groceries. If you were to graph net margins by industry, the record industry would be in the lower 50%.
"We we already burned on the change from cassettes to CD which were going to be much cheaper once they were adopted."
When CDs were launched in the early 80's, prices of $18 were common. If prices hadn't gone down, CDs would be $31 today.
"In real manufacturing, real market forces cut the margins down, but with the recording industry prices are artifically set by the RIAA"
As you know, there are thousands of indie labels that don't belong to the RIAA. If CDs really could be sold for, say, $8.00 at a profit, why aren't we seeing that? All it would take would be for one non-RIAA label to break ranks, and the rest would follow. Do you know why this is the case? Is it a conspiracy that goes way beyond the RIAA, and is the reality that all of the indie labels are working in concert?
"If the recording idustry took an honest look at their options this 5 cents/download option would make them huge amounts of money and save them boatloads on legal fees and bribes for government officials."
I am not sure about that. For instance, by law, compulsory royalties paid to publishers for covers are around $0.08 a track. It's difficult to make money selling a track for $0.05 when you must pay $0.08 to the songwriter. This is not something that can be made up in volume. I guess we could change the laws to allow record companies pay songwriters less, but songwriting is already generally a sucky business to be in.
"Yeah, that's impossible! You should call the CEO of allofmp3.com tell him that."
AllofMP3 is able to do it because they don't pay the artists or labels. The production costs are covered by somebody else and they're not reimbursed through sales.
"What I am saying is that so many people look at the industry and conclude that executives should be payed less and artists more. Why not simply pay executives less and keep paying the artists the same? Clearly they either see the paycheque as large enough or they find other non-monetary values in creating the music."
Hmmm. My only first-hand experience here was a guy I knew who owned an indie label. He paid himself $20K a year and worked long days and long nights. He had a staff of about five people, and when sales were poor, he had to fire his friends. There are thousands of other indie labels and I'm sure many of them have similar stories.
I have no doubt that the executives at the most successful record companies are paid quite highly, but I don't know if the highest-salaried people in the record industry make more, on average, than the highest-salaried people in the computer industry or any other industry. I am not referring simply to the standouts like Fiorina or Gates; many of the executives in the computer industry with whom I deal with are in the million buck club.
Companies generally pay their executives what they're seen as worth. There are lots of stories of spectacular blunders (such as Fiorina), but when a board elects to pay a CEO $HIGH_AMOUNT, it's because they believe it's a good return on their investment.
"Yes. But I bet my derrier some of those employees from record companies make a heck of a lot more money than many of the IT folks working their hump off to make a living, even though an average IT person is probably more educated."
You are correct. Some record company employees make money than some IT folks. It is also correct to say that some IT folks make more money than some record company employees.
"People in the record industry are generally better paid than people in the IT industry" is probably not an accurate statement. My guess is that record companies pay their IT guys (as well as their designers, their marketers, their salespeople, and their janitorial staff) the going market rate.
"Jeesh, I know a lot of IT Managers (Director and above) that can't afford a decent vacation, even less a 5 carat ring."
The only president of a record label I've ever med paid himself $20,000 a year. He had five employees, and when his sales dropped, he had to fire his friends. I would bet that the average indie label has fewer than 15 employees.
"However, I can't also conceive giving my hard earned money to clowns like P. Diddy."
I agree. I'm not a huge fan of his music. I'm sure that you and I address this problem by not buying or even downloading his music. However, many Slashdotters take the position of "I don't like P. Diddy's { music | lifestyle | talent-to-income ratio } so thus I am fully justified in pirating his music." These people suck. It's okay to simply admit that you like getting something for nothing, rather than turning piracy into some sort of social cause on the Montgomery freedom march.
"Likewise, the vast majority of artists should not earn a handsome living from their craft. I'm not saying that the right artists are getting the money right now (according to my tastes nor my demands for quality and originality), simply that there is nothing strange about the fact that the vast majority of a profession is not rock-star-rich."
Agreed 100%. You and I understand that, but it's lost on much of the "music must be free" crowd. "Artists and musicians have too much money" is an excellent rationalization for piracy, or even for pricing tracks at $0.05, but it doesn't mesh with reality.
" 'artists' like Lipsychson making millions. Record company execs making...millions. IT pros making...a lot less than that. Now ask yourself who can 'suck it up' the most of those groups."
Bad analogy. The executives at Apple (or whomever is paying the IT guys) make millions -- the executives in any large industry make quite a bit of money. The vast majorify of people who work in the record industry (including the "executives" at some indie labels I've met), just as the vast majority of people who work in the IT field, work paycheck-to-paycheck.
Likewise, the vast majority of artists do not earn a handsome living from their craft. "Let's help ourselves to music for free" goes down a lot smoother if you believe that everybody who contributed to the music is a millionaire, but it's simply not true.
I hope this wasn't a surprise to you.
"So, Apple now has to run power-hungry servers with a large staff of IT guys making sure they're patched and running correctly."
I think the general consensus here is "artists and record companies should stop being so greedy." In the spirit of this goal to drive music to $0.05, perhaps IT guys should stop being greedy as well, and just work for the pure joy of providing music, rather than for a salary.
Yes, I know, IT guys have to pay rent or mortgage and support families. Yet artists and employees of record companies do, too. If they can suck it up in the new Slashdot world music order, so can IT professionals.
"Yes, guys and gals, it's money. Money, money, money, money."
Was anybody under the understanding that the music industry was anything but a for-profit business?
Finding that point on the supply/demand curve where you make the most money is a business fundamental. Every business does this, from one-person operations to multinationals. Even the folks at Red Hat and Apple and other companies that Slashdotters love have done this -- it's all about "money money money" to them, too.
"This won't change the fact that the MPAA and RIAA are going against sites like Suprnova or Lokitorrents, and rightly so. I don't think no one ever questionned the protocol itself. Why this sudden urge to "legitimize" it. It's already legitimate, big corps use it themselves (see Blizzard and their modified version)."
Very well put. The MPAA, through its actions so far with regard to its approach toward BitTorrent, shows that they understand the difference between BitTorrent itself, the concept of P2P itself, and the use of BitTorrent for piracy. Interestingly enough, this time it's many Slashdotters who don't seem to understand the difference. The MPAA is finally being sensible in its approach, but as long as Slashdotters continue to confuse takedowns of pirate sites with an attack on P2P itself, we are hurting our own efforts to make the general public understand that P2P can be used responsibly.
To draw an analogy, when the government goes after a child pornographer, I think most Slashdotters would understand that this is an attack on the child pornographer, and not an attack on Nikon, the art of photography, or the technology of photons hitting a CCD sensor.
"In a shocker announcement, Common Sense LLC announced today that HTTP, FTP, TELNET, email and other protocols can also be used for piracy. MPAA has already announced it plans to sue the creators and maintainers of such protocols and its clients. Other associations are expected to follow suit shortly."
The MPAA has taken down Torrent sites that specialize in pirated material. They are not going after BitTorrent itself, or sites like the ones mentioned in TFA that provide only Torrents to content released with the creator's permission. In other words, they're finally using some sense.
A more fitting analogy would be the MPAA going after a site that offers pirated material using the HTTP, FTP or telnet protocols. This != an attack on the HTTP/FTP/telnet protocols themselves.
Likewise, when the cops bust child pornographers, this should not be misrepresented as an attack on photography itself, or an attack on the technology of photons hitting CCD sensors.
This is a fundamental point to understand if you want to fight for your rights to use P2P.
"What I want to see is for this to have no biases except possibly to comply with hate crime legislation and to suitably screen access to some items for over 18s only. I want no political slanting of what gets in, I would far rather it be noted for the fairness of their coverage."
Huh? It's their site; they can do what they like. It's trivially easy to set up a web page nowadays. The most productive solution to your dilemma is not to try to tell them what to do, but instead to set up your own site. Want a right-wing site featuring Torrents of content released with the creators' permission? Start your own!
"Now the music and movie businesses of the world can go to Torrentacracy and say,"See, if they can do it right, why can't you?""
Exactly. They've shown that it's really not hard at all to operate a Torrent site in a responsible manner. The operators of these sites showed personal responsibility and respect for creators' rights.
Personal responsibility and respect for others are qualities which I think are underrated, particularly on Slashdot.
As long as we continue to equate P2P and piracy, then the attacks on P2P will go on. The MPAA understands the difference between legitimate Torrent sites (those that post Torrents to content released with the creators' permission) and sites set up primarily for piracy. Once we understand this difference as well, then we can choose our battle. What are we really fighting for -- the survival of P2P, or the legitimacy of piracy? I think the first one is much easier to win, and embracing P2P technology that respects creators' rights is the way to do that.
"It's not about attacks against pirates, it's against legal attacks against the program creators (ie. holding the owners of a p2p network responsible for its users)."
Huh? The MPAA has gone after the pirate sites like Lokitorrent and Suprnova. They are not going after the sites that take the care to provide only torrents of material released with the creators' permission. They are not going after Bram. They are not trying to stop BitTorrent from being distributed.
You may be thinking of MGM v. Grokster, in which MGM is trying to shut down Grokster -- not the concept of P2P. MGM's argument is that Grokster's business model is to make money by providing access to pirated material. On this point, they're correct.
" I think the point is that these sites are unquestionably legal, even to boneheaded organizations like the MPAA. (It's necessary to make things very, very simple such that they can understand.)"
I don't think this explanation is necessary to the MPAA or anybody else. The MPAA has taken down the Torrent sites that trafficked largely in pirated material, but they are ignoring the legal sites.
The confusion might lie in some of the responses to the takedowns of the pirate sites. Remember how Lokitorrent was wrapping themselves in the "defend P2P!" cloak? That was utter nonsense; the MPAA was going after Lokitorrent; not BitTorrent or P2P. Likewise, "MPAA v. Grokster" is the MPAA's attempt to put Grokster out of business, but many Slashdotters liked to take the position that the MPAA was trying to shut down P2P itself. This is what is known as a straw man fallacy.
I think that this position will ultimately hurt P2P's chances of survival. As long as Slashdotters and others continue to equate Lokitorrent and other pirate sites with P2P itself, P2P will continue to be stained by folks like Loki who were using it to make money off of piracy. This is fighting for a short-term goal (getting sympathy for Lokitorrent) at the expense of the long-term goal (making the public at large understand that P2P is a great technology that can be used in a responsible manner that respects creators' rights).
This is the time to promote and use Torrent sites that provide only material distributed with the creators' permission. It isn't the time to act like martyrs and proclaim the death of P2P each time a pirate gets nailed.
Absolutely. There are plenty of absolutely legal places to get free or low-cost music with the permission of the artist.
Slashdotters often like to proclaim that free distribution by self-produced artists is the future of the music industry, but in order for that future to happen, we have to make it happen. Support those brave souls who choose to make their work available for free. If somebody would rather sell their work, then don't buy it... but don't pirate it, either.
"There is no technical reason we haven't been able to purchase a DVD with 4.6 gigabytes of mp3's which would pretty much cover any entire genre."
You can probably find these in China.
"The problem is they would want to charge $110 for a dvd like that and people are not going to pay that much for one disk which won't be replaced when they go bad."
Boxed sets do a steady but consistent business. Once consumer acceptance of DVD Audio has hit that point, I think we'll see collections released on one DVD, along with the requisite booklets and other goodies that come with such sets. You raise a good point about consumer fears of buying one piece of media with a lot of data.
"When you add things like magnatune.com (some darn good music there by the way and ALL legal) into the mix, I cannot see how they will be able to sustain their prices."
You raise another great point. Magnatune is a perfect example of what many Slashdotters would consider to be how music should be produced and sold -- yet it's flailing, while Apple has solds tens of millions of songs. Selling music online, rather than giving it away and relying on the honor system, still appears to be viable.
"In my view, allofmp3.com is charging a fair price for the content."
I disagree. I believe that rightsholders should be compensated for their efforts, and that we should respect their rights. That is fair. iTunes may pay $0.15 to the artist per track, but 1,000 of those tracks will pay for groceries for a month, and 10,000 will pay the rent.
"Note that, at least in the segments of the law you pasted, copyright law only applies to "material objects". I don't think a collection of numbers (which is what a mp3 file is) counts as a material object."
That is the best rationalization for piracy ever. No, really. You should put that on a t-shirt or something.
"The only different from my point of view is that at least allofmp3.com aren't gouging their customers."
This is a suitable position to take in an ideal world where artists are all well off and don't really need your money.
iTunes may pay the artist only $0.10 or $0.20 per track, but a thousand of those tracks buys groceries for the month. Ten thousand pays the rent. Many artists do rely on royalty payments, as small as they are, to survive.
" iTunes doesn't pay the artists much, and 'a little' is practically the same as 'none at all' " is not a valid rationalization for using AllOfMP3 in lieu of iTunes.
However, if you are trying to find musicians who don't want royalty payments (because they already have enough money, or because they have a day job, or whatever) there are plenty of resources for permission-based free music downloads. There's no need to violate somebody's rights to get free music. Why not support them, instead?
"If we let our rights get eroded away this is what is going to happen."
Interesting choice of words. If this were, say, 1920 and an employee of a company were to say inappropriate things in an ad in the New York Times, they'd be liable to be fired then, too.
"IANAL, but I suspect that those charges are a little more complicated than your suggesting. For example, if I ran a hotel and surmised that, of course, some people staying there are probably involved in prostitution, but didn't actively try to figure out who and kick them out, I don't believe I'd be charged with anything. If I ran a matchmaking service or provided a special lounge for prostitutes and their johns to meet, then I'd be making a positive action, which would change things considerably."
You bring up a good point. MGM is essentially arguing that Grokster is more like the latter, than the former, since it's trivial for them to observe that the majority of their traffic is unauthorized.
"Likewise, if I ran an anonymous FTP and I found occasional kiddie porn on my server (remember, posted anonymously) and erased it ASAP without contacting the authorities, I suspect I wouldn't be charged with anything. It wouldn't then be my legal responsibility to turn off all of my servers on the basis that they have been used in the past for illegal purposes and could be used that way again in the future. If I catered specifically to kiddie-porn viewers, or knowingly left it up on the server, I would, at that point, be knowingly publishing kiddie porn on the net, which is a positive action."
Unfortunately I have first-hand experience here; I got an education in the law a few years back when a user uploaded kiddie porn to one of my sites. For several years now (since the passing of either the COPA or the COPPA, I'm not sure), if you're a site operator and you discover child pornography on your server, you are legally required to notify the FBI and turn over log info. You're correct from a practical standpoint that if you deleted it immediately, you would likely not be charged because there would be little way for the FBI to know what transpired, but if they were to find out and they had the werewithal, the US government has the legal grounds to prosecute, even in the absence of "positive action" as you define it. The richteousness of such a law was recently the subject of heated debate on /. with the posting of an article regarding Australia's recent move to add a similar law.