"These people are not going to pay your bills for you. Don't offer to pay theirs. They want broadband, they need to shell out their cash."
I don't believe it was stated in the question that he was making this up-to-$7K investment out of pure kindness and that he was asking for nothing in return. Somebody, please correct me if I'm wrong.
By my math, there are up to 48 tenants in the apartment building. If he charges each $20 a month for access to his wireless network, that's $11.5K, or a return of about 150%, in the first year alone.
Unless he's lucky, buying property is unlikely to have that rate of return.
A couple of things that downhillbattle.org has stated reveal a pattern of not paying due to personal responsibility. From the Recycler site:
"so winning a single song means you won a chance to spend 20 minutes downloading, installing, and signing up for a music service that will cost a lot more than your Pepsi habit."
Personal responsibility means that said downloaders can use the iTunes Music Store, or not use it, depending on their desires. It's not as if there's an obligation to keep using the software. Let people think for themselves!
Likewise:
"When you use the Tune Recycler, you know that no money is going to support price fixing, payola, or lawsuits against families with children"
Blunders aside, the lawsuits largely target folks who are the "whales" of music file sharing; i.e. making thousands of songs available for download. Again, here's where personal responsibility comes in -- if you minimize the risk of being sued, don't share thousands of copyrighted music files without permission. Whether you have a family or not makes absolutely no difference. Your liability to be sued is unchanged whether you live alone, have a family, you're living in somebody's basement, or you live with a pack of rhesus monkeys. Again, it's taking responsibility for one's own actions that's the key. It's a good concept that dowhhillbattle.org does not appear to have sufficient faith in.
As a quick aside, there's a difference between MAPs and MSRPs... for the most part, in the US retailers are, naturally, allowed to sell at any price they like. But in certain industries in which the big retailers engage in massive advertising, a MAP can be a real problem for any retailer with the notion of competing on price. If you can afford to sell a product at $10, while your big competitor is selling it at $12 and plastering the newspapers with enormous advertisements, you might be in trouble. Selling the product for two bucks less than everybody else is one of those tree-falls-in-the-forest things if you can't get customers into your store to actually purchase it.
At any rate, the average retail price in the US of a new CD has fallen to $13.50. The great thing about our free market economy is that anybody with the means and the talent can get into any business. This is no different in the recording industry: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of indie labels. Starting an indie label and making it successful is very hard, but so is starting a restaurant. So is starting a retail store. And so on.
These hundreds of indie labels typically sell their wares at retail for not much less than $13.50. Why is that? To your "just don't buy a Saturn" point, if the labels are truly independent, and if the big players are truly a cartel, wouldn't it make sense of these indie labels to sell CDs in the brick-and-mortar retail channel at a price that makes more sense to slashdotters, like $4.99? Two theories come to mind:
All of these tiny indie labels are actually part of the vast evil cartel and are, too, reaping enormous profits at the expense of consumers and artists (this theory is favored by the "A CD only costs $0.25 to make so it should be sold for $1.00" crowd here on/., who presumably do not have MBAs or masters' degrees in economics).
$13.50, more or less, is about the price that is necessary to cover the expenses of creating, distributing, promoting and selling a CD.
Which theory holds more truth is, as the math textbooks say, left to the reader!
I know you were joking, but margins in the designer furniture business (and, I suspect, the furniture trade in general) are much higher than the CD business. As are many other businesses. Those who understand the difference between gross margin and net margin get what the analysts say when they point out that the recording industry as a whole operates on low margins.
I do not agree. Two wrongs still do not make a right.
You're in the UK, so this doesn't apply to you so much, but on a larger scale, a lot of this is ultimately self-serving excuse-making: "I read on/. that a British outfit had a dispute with a retailer. Therefore, here in the United States, I shall commence guilt-free piracy based on this anecdote."
The fact is that lots of industries have these sorts of disputes with retailers. There's a concept called a MAP -- a "minimum advertised price" -- that just about every retail industry in the US uses, to the chagrin of retailers who could otherwise make more money by selling at a lower price than the other guys. Saturn, and to a degree Porsche and perhaps other car makers, effectively engage in price fixing in the United States. Italy uses tariffs on all sorts of industries to protect their home market. And so on.
I acknowledge that typical/. readers can't be expected to have a deep understanding of the vagaries of the retail channel -- they are (and I don't mean this perjoratively) geeks, not salesguys. Nonetheless, it's intellectually dishonest to selectively use a feature of the CD industry which applies to countless other industries as an excuse to break the law.
"Is a printed out list of file names and an ip address enough evidence to award thousands or even the millions of dollars the RIAA was shooting for?"
Pretty doubtful. I'm sure the RIAA and their lawyers understand that, too. If I were handed the task of gathering evidence that a particular person were distributing copyrighted material, I'd start by actually downloading and listening to it to confirm that the shared files weren't fakes. The RIAA already made the mistake of not doing this with that "Usher" file name incident. It's not unreasonable to assume that they have since found smarter people to do a better job of gathering evidence. If you and I could put our heads together and come up with a reliable way of nailing somebody for copyright violation, they probably can, too. In short -- don't underestimate the enemy.
"What criminal act are the police investigating with regards to university network logs? The RIAA is a private organization launching civil lawsuits. Nowhere do the police get involved in this process."
This strategy relies on hoping that police don't get involved for some reason in the future.
Absolutely true story: this week I've spent a fair amount of time on the phone with the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I did this because I help run a web site to which somebody posted nasty and explicit child pornography.
Because we keep IP logs, I was able to provide this information. Taking care of this business has not been pleasant, but providing this information, and thus creating the possibility that the perpetrator will be caught, has made me feel better. If this person is caught, the world will be a better place.
Now imagine if I'd implemented a deliberately short log purging schedule with the express purpose of protecting my users who might use the site to trade copyrighted MP3 files, as the n-parent poster is apparently doing. I would have been helping the child pornographer.
I don't see it as my job to take active steps to create a haven for illegal activity which I might happen to find morally acceptable. Instead, I rely on a concept which is in short supply these days: personal responsibility. If the users of my network don't want to be nailed for copyright infringements, the solution is in their hands: don't infringe other people's copyrights.
"However, I *really* worry that the information could be subpoenad and used against individual students by the likes of the RIAA/MPAA. I've been harping on upper management to let us purge the history after roughly a week (tops), which would give us plenty of debugging time, and at the same time not give the legal system enough time to issue a subpoena before the information is gone."
Copyright violation is just one illegal act that somebody can commit on your network. There's trafficking in illegal pornography, including child pornography. There's online stalking and harrassment. It sounds to me that you're attempting to create a haven for your users, but you're taking the risk that they will take advantage of this haven only to break the law in "good" ways.
My experience in managing large online groups is to expect, and prepare for, the worst case scenario. With 4,000 users, copyright violation is not the worst case. Not by far.
You're confusing the burden of proof for criminal cases with the burden of proof for civil cases.
With criminal cases, the operative phrase you'll hear is beyond a reasonable doubt, and I think that's what you're applying here. With civil cases, only a preponderance of the evidence is necessary.
Another important concept that many amateur lawyers miss is the "laugh test." If you're caught sharing the collected works of Metallica and your defense is that those files were really drink recipes and it's a Dickens-like coincidence that the filenames happen to match up exactly with the Metallica oeuvre, it won't fly.
"Who knows."
I know that was a rhetorical statement, but there's a clear answer: lawyers do. As in, the highly paid legal team that the RIAA likely consulted for months on end before embarking on the lawsuits. It's a safe bet that they know what they're doing.
"Last I checked, IP-addresses were not legal ID, like ID cards or passports are."
The feds (of various nations) nail kiddy porn collectors with surprising regularity, often starting with just an IP log.
"Many of these lawsuits will therefore be against companies which are not liable for their customers' actions."
This is vastly oversimplifying it, but in many cases service providers are responsible for their customers' actions when it comes to breaking the law. There's one set of laws in the US that states that a service provider is obligated to escalate reports of child pornography (I've had to do this myself). There's another law, called the DMCA, which (again, oversimplifying it) puts service providers on the hook to take action if they get a report of copyright violation by one of their users.
"Who owns the works of Bach, Vivaldi, Elgar? Virgin records? their distant relatives? the artists that perform the masterpieces?"
It's a bit off-topic, but since you asked...
The works themselves are in the public domain. You can whip out your axe of choice and play them to your hearts' content. You may perform them publicly, or you may record your own performance and burn it to a CD, and sell it, or give it away.
However, if you record yourself playing a public domain piece, you (and perhaps others, if you got help) own the copyright to the recording. Nobody can duplicate that recording without your permission. Typically, a classical music recording is owned by some combination of the performer(s) or conductor, the recording engineer, and the record label that reproduces and distributes it.
If this seems unfair, remember that in the case of a commercial recording, the person who sits down at the piano or whips the baton around probably has uncommon talent and has worked hard to get where they are. Likewise, they are in a studio which cost money to build, and the recording engineer at the mixing board spent a lot of time and money honing their craft. The record label that distributes the recording, in turn, has spent money in producing, distributing, and marketing the music.
It might very well be that many people reading this simply don't see the point of buying a CD of, say, Nikolaus Harnencourt conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concertos 1 - 5, when a free MIDI file does the job just fine. This is a perfectly legitimate opinion to have. However, not discerning or caring for the difference does not give one the moral prerogative to help themselves to said copyrighted recording for free.
"I guess some people will not truely understand the different between copyright infringment and piracy until they are killed on the high seas by people with eye patches who go "Arrrrg!""
Huh? The word "piracy" has been synonymous with copyright infringement for quite a while. As far back as the late 70's I remember it being used to describe copyright infringement of software for the Apple ][ (and software pirates happily called themselves just that), and I'm told that its origins are almost a century old.
"Well, obviously copying of any sort is the equivilant of looting and murder on the high seas."
Oh, please -- you already know that nobody is implying this. It is simply a word with multiple meanings (Four, according to one dictionary). There are lots of words in the English language which have multiple meanings. "Polish" is one. "Faggot" is another. Some words have dozens. Come on, folks -- this isn't a concept worth getting upset over. There's just no percentage in trumpeting one's lack of understanding of the English language.
I hope the implication isn't that it's okay to say "software piracy" but somehow "music piracy" isn't a valid term, as if it's possible to pirate one but not the other. This gets dangerously close to putting intrinsic values on different art forms. Creating music can be just as hard -- if not harder -- than writing software, and musicians deserve the same level of respect given to any other type of artist or creator of intellectual property.
I differ with you on one major point... in the phrase "fair use", "fair" is not synonymous with "unobstructed" as you state.
With copyrighted material, the owner's rights typically supercede yours. If the rightsholder wants to distribute a game only in copy-protected format, or with a serial dongle, that is their prerogative. Likewise, if a musician wants to release a CD with digital rights management, or an author wants to publish only in Esperanto, that's their choice.
You won't find the phrase "fair use rights" in US Copyright Law. There's a section on fair use, which I think every slashdotter should read if they haven't, but I think some people over-interpret it. Fair use doctrine states that there are several ways that you can copy a copyrighted work and not be liable (such as for educational purposes), but it's not a blanket that gives you the right to do whatever it takes to make that copy. For example, the existence of the "fair use" section in the law and the fact that making a copy of a CD for your car would not expose you to liability does not equate to a guaranteed legal right to a CD without copy protection or other DRM. The right to make the call on whether to produce a CD with DRM or not lies exclusively with the rightsholders.
Digital Rights Management systems generally exist because the honor system doesn't work on a macro scale. Luckily enough for the public at large, DRM is ultimately driven by the buying power of the audience. CD-based DRM, particularly the kind which prevents me from playing originals in my Pathfinder's CD player, is utterly retarded and I am sure that the free market economy will eventually kill it. Easy-to-live-with DRM, like that provided by Apple's iTunes Music Store, is something that we can more easily cope with and will likely thrive.
"Limiting access to a shitty little scratched up disc that only cost the companies $0.05 to make for $17 a pop is rape, plain and simple, especially when you consider there's one good song on an album and 12 other terrible songs."
Actually, margins in the recording industry are much lower than in many other industries. Combine that with the speculative nature of the business, and it's a pretty crappy industry to be in. Ask anybody who works for an indie record label and doesn't have a Britney or a Outkast to cover the bills for a year.
Don't confuse the price of a CD-R with the cost of pressing a CD -- believe it or not, pressing costs more, in part because the volumes are lower.
Also remember that a finished CD is the work of dozens or hundreds of people -- all of whom expect to be paid. Before you shout "those greedy bastards!", consider that many of them are like you and me... good people, who may have families to support and mortgages to pay. They do this by working, in some capacity, in the music industry. I may get modded down for this, but I believe that this fact alone doesn't make them worthy of our scorn.
CDs are sold into the distribution channel for about $8 - $10. This leaves the record label with about a 50% or 60% gross margin -- typical for a lot of industries. But the net margin is much lower, after accrual for price protection, channel marketing, returns and the like. This is why many, if not most, CDs don't end up turning a profit, and if a CD loses money, the record company eats the loss.
"Sell me a song I like for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
Me, too, and I think prices will ultimately end up around there. But in the meantime, paying $1 does not fill me with sufficient outrage to allow me to justify piracy.
"Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party) and I'm certain the RIAA/MPAA can make a buck and keep their customers from thieving their works."
That would rely on the honor system becoming a much stronger force on the Internet than it is now. I believe it has been shown empirically that the honor system doesn't work on the Internet -- if somebody can get something for free and they think they won't be caught, odds are good that they'll do so. Sad, but true. I don't think we'll ever see the day that a significant amount of commercial media is released by the record or film companies without a certain level of measures in place to protect their rights.
"not worth it. You'd have to spend quite a bit of time in your vehicle to make staellite radio worth the cost that it is now. One may as well invest in a multi-disc changer that reads MP3 discs. This way you can have hours upon hours of music that you choose, commercial free."
I can't emphasize enough how cool it is to hear music that you haven't heard before. I've heard my MP3s thousands of times, but each time I turn on the XM receiver I hear something new. Plus, it's gotten me interested in musical genres I never would have discovered if my only tools where a music download service and a stack of CD-Rs. I never use my Nomad Jukebox 3 any more; in fact, I gave it to a friend.
So -- to address your concern -- I justify it because I enjoy it so much more than I do of my rather massive MP3 collection. It ranks up there with TiVo on one of the best entertainment investments I've made.
Regarding the commercials... yes, XM has them, but they're few and far between. I'd have to guess perhaps once per hour, and only on a few of the stations I listen to. More than tolerable in exchange for pretty good quality audio and a great selection.
"Traditionally, radio is lesser quality than what the RIAA offers for sale, and previous comments have mentioned that the audio sounds compressed, so the possibility of the RIAA persuing any increased fees for XM or Sirius is slim, in my opinion."
Very slim, because the fees that radio stations pay go to artists, not the RIAA or even record companies.
The fees are paid through licenses from BMI and ASCAP, non-profit societies run by and for artists. And you can be sure that these licenses were negotiated with BMI and ASCAP long before the first satellites were launched.
"But this is because the RIAA is too busy chasing after the digital pirates, and don't have time for the "small time" operations of bootleggers, like Napster/KaZaa/etc. is the first time piracy has ever occured."
They bust CD pirates, counterfeiters and bootleggers quite a bit:
"Unfortunately what the industry will probably say is "Look using the RIAA to sue everyone because we don't know how to adjust our business model, has really paid off!"
They have adjusted their business model. For example, they've embraced online distribution through sites like iTMS, and it's paid off very well. The record companies are learning that online distribution can work. If by adjusting the business model you mean to stop asking that people pay for music, that is not going to happen.
A friend who works for one of the legitimate download services (not iTMS) states that they are thrilled with the lawsuits. The theory goes that the lawsuits will scare people away from pirating their music, at which point they'll either buy CDs the old-fashioned way, or try one of the legitimate online services. They don't need to stop all piracy; just enough to give the online distribution market the velocity it needs. The RIAA and the download services have a symbiotic relationship here.
"Although it seems like more music companies are getting directly involved in the online music biz, I haven't seen any reports on what orgs like the RIAA really think about these commercial online music offerings."
iTMS is a reseller, just like Amazon or Tower Records. And, a sale is a sale. Apple launched iTMS with the cooperation of the artists and record companies. I'm sure the record companies who've shared in Apple's good fortune are thrilled.
"....because cd sales drops have nothing to do with things like slow economies, declining quality in music, overpriced cds....."
Music quality is a constant; the good-stuff-to-crap ratio is about the same today as it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be: we tend to think of the 1970's as the decade of Dark Side of the Moon or The Long Run or (insert your favorite classic 70's album here), but there was a LOT of crap back then, too. We've just pushed it out of our memory. The recent huge drop in CD sales can't easily be attributed to music quality, as it's a constant.
Music pricing is another constant. In fact, in the USA, it's gone down a bit. The average price of a CD is down to $13.50 in the US. In 1984, $9.99 was considered a decent price for an LP. That would be $17.30 in 2002 dollars. So, again, the recent huge drop in CD sales can't be attributed to pricing alone, as it's a constant.
This leaves the economy. In one way the economy is definitely a big cause, as an unemployed person may be more liable to resort to pirating music than the same person would if they still had a job. But it's tough to blame the drop in CD sales entirely on the economy, for a couple of reasons: other forms of entertainment (including those that aren't piratable) haven't dropped nearly as much, and while the economy has had its ups and downs over the past several decades, this drop in CD sales is unprecedented.
Claiming that the utter explosion in music piracy over the past few years has absolutely no effect on CD sales is a phenomenon that I call "ignoring the elephant" -- that is, the two-ton elephant in the room wearing a shirt labelled "music piracy." The drop in sales is likely due to many factors, piracy being one of them, but this is a complex issue not easily solved by simple bromides like "it's the economy."
And, of course, economy or not, if the Canadian record companies think that piracy is part of the problem, it's their prerogative to do something about it. Sure, lowering CD prices, working with legitimate download sites, and education are key as well, but sometimes you've just got to kick some ass.
You missed a few crucial distinctions between MP3 files and the radio:
Once you've downloaded an MP3 file, you can listen to it any time you want -- just like a CD.
When you hear a song on the radio, the artist (not the record company) has gotten paid for the priveledge. When you download an MP3 file from a P2P network, the artist gets nothing.
Regarding causation, it's anecdotal, but everybody I know who's active on the P2P networks openly admits that they download MP3 files to avoid paying for CDs, and not one of them would say that they actually buy more music because of this. In short, they freely admit to being pirates and don't try to wrap their actions in some sort of noble purpose. I really don't think my friends are the sole exceptions in a world full of people who are using Kazaa as a springboard to buy more CDs.
Of course, it would be nice if it were true -- with the explosion in P2P downloading over the past few years, music sales would have exploded accordingly, as Kazaa turned these downloaders into buyers. The record industry would have seen a rennaisance of unprecedented proportions, and they would not have felt the need to start suing pirates. But that didn't happen. In fact, sales have imploded. If there are people out there who buy more music as a result of piracy, they're not out there in numbers that are big enough to make a difference.
Apple has already shown that DRM can boost sales. Remember, there would be no iTMS unless Apple had been able to provide DRM-encoded tracks for the benefit of nervous rightsholders. It's highly unlikely that Apple could have gotten permission from so many of the rightsholders if iTMS were distributing unprotected MP3s.
And, we know what happened next: Apple just sold its 25 millionth song. These are 25 million sales that Apple and the record company would not have enjoyed if iTMS were not a reality, and it's DRM that made iTMS possible.
"I predict that increased DRM will not be an accelerator but will continue instead to be a de-accelerator and drain on the economy which will reduce digital sales of media."
Unfortunately the legal download services which use DRM (that is, virtually all of them) have a lot of momentum going for them. The first step that would have to happen in order for your prediction to be realized would be for a legitimate download service to spring up that offered all the content of iTMS or Napster, but in unprotected format. But, that's a very large first step.
DRM is the necessary security blanket that allows the rightsholders to feel confident in selling their stuff online. The legitimate download services would not exist without DRM. The record companies could not be convinced to make entire catalogs available in MP3 format. DRM made the legitimate online music industry explode.
I think the "if you build it, they will come" segment has passed. Apple just celebrated its 25 millionth download; they've already shown the record companies that online distribution can, and does, work. Offering the rightsholders some level of assurance, in the form of DRM, was the key to getting iTMS, and others, off the ground. You are 100% correct that the consumer adoption step is important, and Apple can show you 25 million examples of its success. And, whether we are happy with this fact or not, DRM made it possible.
Sure thing. That comment was within the context of the record companies only agreeing to participate in the online music stores once they were offered the ability to release their stuff in a DRM-encoded format. If the technology purveyors hadn't developed DRM systems that were to the record companies' liking, the labels probably wouldn't have participated so eagerly, if at all.
So, in short, the recent explosion in legal music download services owes its existence to DRM. I don't think the record companies would have gone for it otherwise. Having to get DRM-encoded files from iTMS may be inconvenient for some, but it's better than no iTMS at all.
"That's a straw man. Until you can show me a case of piracy actually DESTROYING a business, there is nothing to talk about."
Are you saying that the lost business due to piracy is only relevant if the rightsholder is driven to bankruptcy? That is, if I lose 20% of my business to piracy and I have to lay off 20% of my workers or cut my living expenses by 20%, it's a non-issue?
Artists are free to sign with record companies, or not sign. This is each and every artist's choice. If they feel that they can do better by producing, promoting and distributing their work themselves (and there have been incidents of this paying off well), then that's their choice. This is another situation which can be applied to lots of industries. When there is a glut of a particular resource (such as the current IT glut in many markets), compensation will go down. It's one of those unfortunate facts of how the economy operates and, thus, should not be used as moral justification for piracy.
I disagree that there isn't any price inflation going on... the better studios, or the engineers with the better reputations have the luxury of charging more for their services. But, this happens in lots of industries. And, the tough task of finding an engineer or a studio that will give you quality work for a fair price is something that musicians face even if they opt not to go the label route. Promoting and distributing your music on your own can also be a huge bitch and there are people waiting to fleece you at every turn.
You are 100% correct that it's tough to make a buck, but all the examples you've given in the record industry are facts of life for other industries, as well.
Very good points indeed. Just as it took several years for the recording industry to get the whole CD thing right (good remastering, decent pricing), online music distribution is in that "getting it right" phase. DRM and file format standards still need some tweaking, and I still think there's some room to move in pricing models.
This is exactly why I'm not taking the "sky is falling" approach and shrieking about the imminent death of the recording industry. They survived the CD transition and they'll survive this one. It just takes time.
Slashdot Mirror
"These people are not going to pay your bills for you. Don't offer to pay theirs. They want broadband, they need to shell out their cash."
I don't believe it was stated in the question that he was making this up-to-$7K investment out of pure kindness and that he was asking for nothing in return. Somebody, please correct me if I'm wrong.
By my math, there are up to 48 tenants in the apartment building. If he charges each $20 a month for access to his wireless network, that's $11.5K, or a return of about 150%, in the first year alone.
Unless he's lucky, buying property is unlikely to have that rate of return.
"so winning a single song means you won a chance to spend 20 minutes downloading, installing, and signing up for a music service that will cost a lot more than your Pepsi habit."
Personal responsibility means that said downloaders can use the iTunes Music Store, or not use it, depending on their desires. It's not as if there's an obligation to keep using the software. Let people think for themselves!
Likewise:"When you use the Tune Recycler, you know that no money is going to support price fixing, payola, or lawsuits against families with children"
Blunders aside, the lawsuits largely target folks who are the "whales" of music file sharing; i.e. making thousands of songs available for download. Again, here's where personal responsibility comes in -- if you minimize the risk of being sued, don't share thousands of copyrighted music files without permission. Whether you have a family or not makes absolutely no difference. Your liability to be sued is unchanged whether you live alone, have a family, you're living in somebody's basement, or you live with a pack of rhesus monkeys. Again, it's taking responsibility for one's own actions that's the key. It's a good concept that dowhhillbattle.org does not appear to have sufficient faith in.
As a quick aside, there's a difference between MAPs and MSRPs... for the most part, in the US retailers are, naturally, allowed to sell at any price they like. But in certain industries in which the big retailers engage in massive advertising, a MAP can be a real problem for any retailer with the notion of competing on price. If you can afford to sell a product at $10, while your big competitor is selling it at $12 and plastering the newspapers with enormous advertisements, you might be in trouble. Selling the product for two bucks less than everybody else is one of those tree-falls-in-the-forest things if you can't get customers into your store to actually purchase it.
At any rate, the average retail price in the US of a new CD has fallen to $13.50. The great thing about our free market economy is that anybody with the means and the talent can get into any business. This is no different in the recording industry: there are hundreds, if not thousands, of indie labels. Starting an indie label and making it successful is very hard, but so is starting a restaurant. So is starting a retail store. And so on.
These hundreds of indie labels typically sell their wares at retail for not much less than $13.50. Why is that? To your "just don't buy a Saturn" point, if the labels are truly independent, and if the big players are truly a cartel, wouldn't it make sense of these indie labels to sell CDs in the brick-and-mortar retail channel at a price that makes more sense to slashdotters, like $4.99? Two theories come to mind:
Which theory holds more truth is, as the math textbooks say, left to the reader!
I know you were joking, but margins in the designer furniture business (and, I suspect, the furniture trade in general) are much higher than the CD business. As are many other businesses. Those who understand the difference between gross margin and net margin get what the analysts say when they point out that the recording industry as a whole operates on low margins.
I do not agree. Two wrongs still do not make a right.
You're in the UK, so this doesn't apply to you so much, but on a larger scale, a lot of this is ultimately self-serving excuse-making: "I read on /. that a British outfit had a dispute with a retailer. Therefore, here in the United States, I shall commence guilt-free piracy based on this anecdote."
The fact is that lots of industries have these sorts of disputes with retailers. There's a concept called a MAP -- a "minimum advertised price" -- that just about every retail industry in the US uses, to the chagrin of retailers who could otherwise make more money by selling at a lower price than the other guys. Saturn, and to a degree Porsche and perhaps other car makers, effectively engage in price fixing in the United States. Italy uses tariffs on all sorts of industries to protect their home market. And so on.
I acknowledge that typical /. readers can't be expected to have a deep understanding of the vagaries of the retail channel -- they are (and I don't mean this perjoratively) geeks, not salesguys. Nonetheless, it's intellectually dishonest to selectively use a feature of the CD industry which applies to countless other industries as an excuse to break the law.
"Is a printed out list of file names and an ip address enough evidence to award thousands or even the millions of dollars the RIAA was shooting for?"
Pretty doubtful. I'm sure the RIAA and their lawyers understand that, too. If I were handed the task of gathering evidence that a particular person were distributing copyrighted material, I'd start by actually downloading and listening to it to confirm that the shared files weren't fakes. The RIAA already made the mistake of not doing this with that "Usher" file name incident. It's not unreasonable to assume that they have since found smarter people to do a better job of gathering evidence. If you and I could put our heads together and come up with a reliable way of nailing somebody for copyright violation, they probably can, too. In short -- don't underestimate the enemy.
"What criminal act are the police investigating with regards to university network logs? The RIAA is a private organization launching civil lawsuits. Nowhere do the police get involved in this process."
This strategy relies on hoping that police don't get involved for some reason in the future.
Absolutely true story: this week I've spent a fair amount of time on the phone with the FBI and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. I did this because I help run a web site to which somebody posted nasty and explicit child pornography.
Because we keep IP logs, I was able to provide this information. Taking care of this business has not been pleasant, but providing this information, and thus creating the possibility that the perpetrator will be caught, has made me feel better. If this person is caught, the world will be a better place.
Now imagine if I'd implemented a deliberately short log purging schedule with the express purpose of protecting my users who might use the site to trade copyrighted MP3 files, as the n-parent poster is apparently doing. I would have been helping the child pornographer.
I don't see it as my job to take active steps to create a haven for illegal activity which I might happen to find morally acceptable. Instead, I rely on a concept which is in short supply these days: personal responsibility. If the users of my network don't want to be nailed for copyright infringements, the solution is in their hands: don't infringe other people's copyrights.
"However, I *really* worry that the information could be subpoenad and used against individual students by the likes of the RIAA/MPAA. I've been harping on upper management to let us purge the history after roughly a week (tops), which would give us plenty of debugging time, and at the same time not give the legal system enough time to issue a subpoena before the information is gone."
Copyright violation is just one illegal act that somebody can commit on your network. There's trafficking in illegal pornography, including child pornography. There's online stalking and harrassment. It sounds to me that you're attempting to create a haven for your users, but you're taking the risk that they will take advantage of this haven only to break the law in "good" ways.
My experience in managing large online groups is to expect, and prepare for, the worst case scenario. With 4,000 users, copyright violation is not the worst case. Not by far.
You're confusing the burden of proof for criminal cases with the burden of proof for civil cases.
With criminal cases, the operative phrase you'll hear is beyond a reasonable doubt, and I think that's what you're applying here. With civil cases, only a preponderance of the evidence is necessary.
Another important concept that many amateur lawyers miss is the "laugh test." If you're caught sharing the collected works of Metallica and your defense is that those files were really drink recipes and it's a Dickens-like coincidence that the filenames happen to match up exactly with the Metallica oeuvre, it won't fly.
"Who knows."
I know that was a rhetorical statement, but there's a clear answer: lawyers do. As in, the highly paid legal team that the RIAA likely consulted for months on end before embarking on the lawsuits. It's a safe bet that they know what they're doing.
"Last I checked, IP-addresses were not legal ID, like ID cards or passports are."
The feds (of various nations) nail kiddy porn collectors with surprising regularity, often starting with just an IP log.
"Many of these lawsuits will therefore be against companies which are not liable for their customers' actions."
This is vastly oversimplifying it, but in many cases service providers are responsible for their customers' actions when it comes to breaking the law. There's one set of laws in the US that states that a service provider is obligated to escalate reports of child pornography (I've had to do this myself). There's another law, called the DMCA, which (again, oversimplifying it) puts service providers on the hook to take action if they get a report of copyright violation by one of their users.
"Who owns the works of Bach, Vivaldi, Elgar? Virgin records? their distant relatives? the artists that perform the masterpieces?"
It's a bit off-topic, but since you asked...
The works themselves are in the public domain. You can whip out your axe of choice and play them to your hearts' content. You may perform them publicly, or you may record your own performance and burn it to a CD, and sell it, or give it away.
However, if you record yourself playing a public domain piece, you (and perhaps others, if you got help) own the copyright to the recording. Nobody can duplicate that recording without your permission. Typically, a classical music recording is owned by some combination of the performer(s) or conductor, the recording engineer, and the record label that reproduces and distributes it.
If this seems unfair, remember that in the case of a commercial recording, the person who sits down at the piano or whips the baton around probably has uncommon talent and has worked hard to get where they are. Likewise, they are in a studio which cost money to build, and the recording engineer at the mixing board spent a lot of time and money honing their craft. The record label that distributes the recording, in turn, has spent money in producing, distributing, and marketing the music.
It might very well be that many people reading this simply don't see the point of buying a CD of, say, Nikolaus Harnencourt conducting the Chamber Orchestra of Europe's performance of Beethoven's Piano Concertos 1 - 5, when a free MIDI file does the job just fine. This is a perfectly legitimate opinion to have. However, not discerning or caring for the difference does not give one the moral prerogative to help themselves to said copyrighted recording for free.
"I guess some people will not truely understand the different between copyright infringment and piracy until they are killed on the high seas by people with eye patches who go "Arrrrg!""
Huh? The word "piracy" has been synonymous with copyright infringement for quite a while. As far back as the late 70's I remember it being used to describe copyright infringement of software for the Apple ][ (and software pirates happily called themselves just that), and I'm told that its origins are almost a century old.
"Well, obviously copying of any sort is the equivilant of looting and murder on the high seas."
Oh, please -- you already know that nobody is implying this. It is simply a word with multiple meanings (Four, according to one dictionary). There are lots of words in the English language which have multiple meanings. "Polish" is one. "Faggot" is another. Some words have dozens. Come on, folks -- this isn't a concept worth getting upset over. There's just no percentage in trumpeting one's lack of understanding of the English language.
I hope the implication isn't that it's okay to say "software piracy" but somehow "music piracy" isn't a valid term, as if it's possible to pirate one but not the other. This gets dangerously close to putting intrinsic values on different art forms. Creating music can be just as hard -- if not harder -- than writing software, and musicians deserve the same level of respect given to any other type of artist or creator of intellectual property.
I differ with you on one major point... in the phrase "fair use", "fair" is not synonymous with "unobstructed" as you state.
With copyrighted material, the owner's rights typically supercede yours. If the rightsholder wants to distribute a game only in copy-protected format, or with a serial dongle, that is their prerogative. Likewise, if a musician wants to release a CD with digital rights management, or an author wants to publish only in Esperanto, that's their choice.
You won't find the phrase "fair use rights" in US Copyright Law. There's a section on fair use, which I think every slashdotter should read if they haven't, but I think some people over-interpret it. Fair use doctrine states that there are several ways that you can copy a copyrighted work and not be liable (such as for educational purposes), but it's not a blanket that gives you the right to do whatever it takes to make that copy. For example, the existence of the "fair use" section in the law and the fact that making a copy of a CD for your car would not expose you to liability does not equate to a guaranteed legal right to a CD without copy protection or other DRM. The right to make the call on whether to produce a CD with DRM or not lies exclusively with the rightsholders.
Digital Rights Management systems generally exist because the honor system doesn't work on a macro scale. Luckily enough for the public at large, DRM is ultimately driven by the buying power of the audience. CD-based DRM, particularly the kind which prevents me from playing originals in my Pathfinder's CD player, is utterly retarded and I am sure that the free market economy will eventually kill it. Easy-to-live-with DRM, like that provided by Apple's iTunes Music Store, is something that we can more easily cope with and will likely thrive.
"Limiting access to a shitty little scratched up disc that only cost the companies $0.05 to make for $17 a pop is rape, plain and simple, especially when you consider there's one good song on an album and 12 other terrible songs."
Actually, margins in the recording industry are much lower than in many other industries. Combine that with the speculative nature of the business, and it's a pretty crappy industry to be in. Ask anybody who works for an indie record label and doesn't have a Britney or a Outkast to cover the bills for a year.
Don't confuse the price of a CD-R with the cost of pressing a CD -- believe it or not, pressing costs more, in part because the volumes are lower.
Also remember that a finished CD is the work of dozens or hundreds of people -- all of whom expect to be paid. Before you shout "those greedy bastards!", consider that many of them are like you and me... good people, who may have families to support and mortgages to pay. They do this by working, in some capacity, in the music industry. I may get modded down for this, but I believe that this fact alone doesn't make them worthy of our scorn.
CDs are sold into the distribution channel for about $8 - $10. This leaves the record label with about a 50% or 60% gross margin -- typical for a lot of industries. But the net margin is much lower, after accrual for price protection, channel marketing, returns and the like. This is why many, if not most, CDs don't end up turning a profit, and if a CD loses money, the record company eats the loss.
"Sell me a song I like for $0.50 and I'm a happy camper!"
Me, too, and I think prices will ultimately end up around there. But in the meantime, paying $1 does not fill me with sufficient outrage to allow me to justify piracy.
"Let me use that song in any way I see fit (as long as I'm not trading it around like a joint at a frat party) and I'm certain the RIAA/MPAA can make a buck and keep their customers from thieving their works."
That would rely on the honor system becoming a much stronger force on the Internet than it is now. I believe it has been shown empirically that the honor system doesn't work on the Internet -- if somebody can get something for free and they think they won't be caught, odds are good that they'll do so. Sad, but true. I don't think we'll ever see the day that a significant amount of commercial media is released by the record or film companies without a certain level of measures in place to protect their rights.
"not worth it. You'd have to spend quite a bit of time in your vehicle to make staellite radio worth the cost that it is now. One may as well invest in a multi-disc changer that reads MP3 discs. This way you can have hours upon hours of music that you choose, commercial free."
I can't emphasize enough how cool it is to hear music that you haven't heard before. I've heard my MP3s thousands of times, but each time I turn on the XM receiver I hear something new. Plus, it's gotten me interested in musical genres I never would have discovered if my only tools where a music download service and a stack of CD-Rs. I never use my Nomad Jukebox 3 any more; in fact, I gave it to a friend.
So -- to address your concern -- I justify it because I enjoy it so much more than I do of my rather massive MP3 collection. It ranks up there with TiVo on one of the best entertainment investments I've made.
Regarding the commercials... yes, XM has them, but they're few and far between. I'd have to guess perhaps once per hour, and only on a few of the stations I listen to. More than tolerable in exchange for pretty good quality audio and a great selection.
"Traditionally, radio is lesser quality than what the RIAA offers for sale, and previous comments have mentioned that the audio sounds compressed, so the possibility of the RIAA persuing any increased fees for XM or Sirius is slim, in my opinion."
Very slim, because the fees that radio stations pay go to artists, not the RIAA or even record companies.
The fees are paid through licenses from BMI and ASCAP, non-profit societies run by and for artists. And you can be sure that these licenses were negotiated with BMI and ASCAP long before the first satellites were launched.
"But this is because the RIAA is too busy chasing after the digital pirates, and don't have time for the "small time" operations of bootleggers, like Napster/KaZaa/etc. is the first time piracy has ever occured."
They bust CD pirates, counterfeiters and bootleggers quite a bit:
...it's just not discussed on /. much.
"Unfortunately what the industry will probably say is "Look using the RIAA to sue everyone because we don't know how to adjust our business model, has really paid off!"
They have adjusted their business model. For example, they've embraced online distribution through sites like iTMS, and it's paid off very well. The record companies are learning that online distribution can work. If by adjusting the business model you mean to stop asking that people pay for music, that is not going to happen.
A friend who works for one of the legitimate download services (not iTMS) states that they are thrilled with the lawsuits. The theory goes that the lawsuits will scare people away from pirating their music, at which point they'll either buy CDs the old-fashioned way, or try one of the legitimate online services. They don't need to stop all piracy; just enough to give the online distribution market the velocity it needs. The RIAA and the download services have a symbiotic relationship here.
"Although it seems like more music companies are getting directly involved in the online music biz, I haven't seen any reports on what orgs like the RIAA really think about these commercial online music offerings."
RIAA on Napster/Penn State agreement
iTMS is a reseller, just like Amazon or Tower Records. And, a sale is a sale. Apple launched iTMS with the cooperation of the artists and record companies. I'm sure the record companies who've shared in Apple's good fortune are thrilled.
"....because cd sales drops have nothing to do with things like slow economies, declining quality in music, overpriced cds....."
Music quality is a constant; the good-stuff-to-crap ratio is about the same today as it was ten or twenty or thirty years ago. Nostalgia ain't what it used to be: we tend to think of the 1970's as the decade of Dark Side of the Moon or The Long Run or (insert your favorite classic 70's album here), but there was a LOT of crap back then, too. We've just pushed it out of our memory. The recent huge drop in CD sales can't easily be attributed to music quality, as it's a constant.
Music pricing is another constant. In fact, in the USA, it's gone down a bit. The average price of a CD is down to $13.50 in the US. In 1984, $9.99 was considered a decent price for an LP. That would be $17.30 in 2002 dollars. So, again, the recent huge drop in CD sales can't be attributed to pricing alone, as it's a constant.
This leaves the economy. In one way the economy is definitely a big cause, as an unemployed person may be more liable to resort to pirating music than the same person would if they still had a job. But it's tough to blame the drop in CD sales entirely on the economy, for a couple of reasons: other forms of entertainment (including those that aren't piratable) haven't dropped nearly as much, and while the economy has had its ups and downs over the past several decades, this drop in CD sales is unprecedented.
Claiming that the utter explosion in music piracy over the past few years has absolutely no effect on CD sales is a phenomenon that I call "ignoring the elephant" -- that is, the two-ton elephant in the room wearing a shirt labelled "music piracy." The drop in sales is likely due to many factors, piracy being one of them, but this is a complex issue not easily solved by simple bromides like "it's the economy."
And, of course, economy or not, if the Canadian record companies think that piracy is part of the problem, it's their prerogative to do something about it. Sure, lowering CD prices, working with legitimate download sites, and education are key as well, but sometimes you've just got to kick some ass.
Regarding causation, it's anecdotal, but everybody I know who's active on the P2P networks openly admits that they download MP3 files to avoid paying for CDs, and not one of them would say that they actually buy more music because of this. In short, they freely admit to being pirates and don't try to wrap their actions in some sort of noble purpose. I really don't think my friends are the sole exceptions in a world full of people who are using Kazaa as a springboard to buy more CDs.
Of course, it would be nice if it were true -- with the explosion in P2P downloading over the past few years, music sales would have exploded accordingly, as Kazaa turned these downloaders into buyers. The record industry would have seen a rennaisance of unprecedented proportions, and they would not have felt the need to start suing pirates. But that didn't happen. In fact, sales have imploded. If there are people out there who buy more music as a result of piracy, they're not out there in numbers that are big enough to make a difference.
"This quote is simply wrong."
Apple has already shown that DRM can boost sales. Remember, there would be no iTMS unless Apple had been able to provide DRM-encoded tracks for the benefit of nervous rightsholders. It's highly unlikely that Apple could have gotten permission from so many of the rightsholders if iTMS were distributing unprotected MP3s.
And, we know what happened next: Apple just sold its 25 millionth song. These are 25 million sales that Apple and the record company would not have enjoyed if iTMS were not a reality, and it's DRM that made iTMS possible.
"I predict that increased DRM will not be an accelerator but will continue instead to be a de-accelerator and drain on the economy which will reduce digital sales of media."
Unfortunately the legal download services which use DRM (that is, virtually all of them) have a lot of momentum going for them. The first step that would have to happen in order for your prediction to be realized would be for a legitimate download service to spring up that offered all the content of iTMS or Napster, but in unprotected format. But, that's a very large first step.
This is what they mean:
DRM is the necessary security blanket that allows the rightsholders to feel confident in selling their stuff online. The legitimate download services would not exist without DRM. The record companies could not be convinced to make entire catalogs available in MP3 format. DRM made the legitimate online music industry explode.
I think the "if you build it, they will come" segment has passed. Apple just celebrated its 25 millionth download; they've already shown the record companies that online distribution can, and does, work. Offering the rightsholders some level of assurance, in the form of DRM, was the key to getting iTMS, and others, off the ground. You are 100% correct that the consumer adoption step is important, and Apple can show you 25 million examples of its success. And, whether we are happy with this fact or not, DRM made it possible.
Sure thing. That comment was within the context of the record companies only agreeing to participate in the online music stores once they were offered the ability to release their stuff in a DRM-encoded format. If the technology purveyors hadn't developed DRM systems that were to the record companies' liking, the labels probably wouldn't have participated so eagerly, if at all.
So, in short, the recent explosion in legal music download services owes its existence to DRM. I don't think the record companies would have gone for it otherwise. Having to get DRM-encoded files from iTMS may be inconvenient for some, but it's better than no iTMS at all.
"That's a straw man. Until you can show me a case of piracy actually DESTROYING a business, there is nothing to talk about."
Are you saying that the lost business due to piracy is only relevant if the rightsholder is driven to bankruptcy? That is, if I lose 20% of my business to piracy and I have to lay off 20% of my workers or cut my living expenses by 20%, it's a non-issue?
Artists are free to sign with record companies, or not sign. This is each and every artist's choice. If they feel that they can do better by producing, promoting and distributing their work themselves (and there have been incidents of this paying off well), then that's their choice. This is another situation which can be applied to lots of industries. When there is a glut of a particular resource (such as the current IT glut in many markets), compensation will go down. It's one of those unfortunate facts of how the economy operates and, thus, should not be used as moral justification for piracy.
I disagree that there isn't any price inflation going on... the better studios, or the engineers with the better reputations have the luxury of charging more for their services. But, this happens in lots of industries. And, the tough task of finding an engineer or a studio that will give you quality work for a fair price is something that musicians face even if they opt not to go the label route. Promoting and distributing your music on your own can also be a huge bitch and there are people waiting to fleece you at every turn.
You are 100% correct that it's tough to make a buck, but all the examples you've given in the record industry are facts of life for other industries, as well.
Very good points indeed. Just as it took several years for the recording industry to get the whole CD thing right (good remastering, decent pricing), online music distribution is in that "getting it right" phase. DRM and file format standards still need some tweaking, and I still think there's some room to move in pricing models.
This is exactly why I'm not taking the "sky is falling" approach and shrieking about the imminent death of the recording industry. They survived the CD transition and they'll survive this one. It just takes time.