But... those businesses, along with buggy makers, liveries, etc., were faced with competition from a different form of the same industry. The buggy maker competed against cars. They are both transportation, and the other businesses were support systems for the outdated method of transportation.
Now, the music companies are competing with a new form of the music market and they are fighting it rather than adjusting to it. They are like the buggy makers who had money and influence who got laws passed that required a car going through town to be preceded by a person on foot with a flag - they tried to make it too hard to use a car so they would go back to the horse and buggy. It didn't work then, and it isn't working now.
CD stores are the modern day equivalent to the blacksmith, buggy whip makers, or more directly, the dealers that sold buggy's. When the business you are supporting goes under, you're going to go under with it. It's sad, but that is the way it is.
The music companies in many cases fed the piracy movement. By disallowing the ability to purchase only the songs someone wanted, they encouraged people to find other ways of getting that song. Why spend $20 on an entire CD when your friends are telling you that there are only one or two good songs on it? Or, you've listened to it and only like a couple of songs?
I've been a computer consultant for 20 years. My business today is far different than when I started because I had to change and adapt with the times. When I started out, most of my money was made by building PC's and selling them locally. At the time, I could sell if to double my cost and they would save almost half of what an IBM would coat. Now, Costco sells the whole system with monitor for less than what my cost of the parts would be. So... I adapted my business to survive. Other consultant's I know just complained about Costco and are now working for them, or Best Buy.
Quit whining and figure out how to adapt your business or accept the sad truth that you'll have to shut down and do something else. That is the way it has always been in a capitalist system, and that's the way it will always be.
I'm sorry about your business - I truly am - but putting your head in the sand and blaming everyone else isn't going to bring customers back in. Advertise theme nights where you play CD's from certain types of music, mixed in with the popular bands so people will hear music they didn't know about and buy the CD. Sponsor dance parties at a local club and set up a place to sell CD's with that genre of music there. Hire a good marketing person to give you ideas if you can't think of them yourself.
Good luck, I hope it works out for you. Nobody likes to hear of a family losing their livelihood and home.
The skyrocketing price of oil was caused in large part by speculatative commodity investors who thought that with all the furor going on with Iran would cause Iran to cut back on their oil production and drive the price up. Reality eventually set in and they realized that Iran depends on their oil income for survival. They certainly don't bring in a lot of tourism dollars. Also, investors begain realizing that OPEC no longer controls the majority of our oil imports. The number one source of our oil imports is Canada, not the Middle East. That is the reason oil prices are going down.
Oil companies are making record profits, but they average about.08 per gallon of profit. Most of what we pay for fuel is eaten up by taxes and costs. Also, most of the oil companies earnings aren't even from the USA but throughout the world.
So... I guess you can continue to believe your conspiracy theory, but it isn't based in fact. BTW, I make my living by investing in the commodity and Forex market so if I were wrong about this, I wouldn't be able to afford to fill up my BMW convertible.:)
When I watch a movie on broadcast TV, I know it will be different to substantially different from the original movie. CBS doesn't put a list of all the stuff that was cut out of it at the beginning of the movie. There are no, "We cut out 6 nude scenes, 255 F-bombos, 1 rape scene, 4 drug use scenese," etc. It is edited and we know that even if we don't know exactly what was taken out or changed.
When people get a DVD from Cleanflix, they know it will be different to substantially different from the original movie. Cleanflix doesn't put a list of all the stuff that was cut out of it at the beginning of the movie. It is edited and their customers know that even if they don't know exactly what was taken out or changed.
Cleanflix isn't hiding the fact or misleading people that the movie they send you is the same thing as the original. The customers don't WANT the original and 99% of them would never rent, buy or watch the movie if it weren't edited. I've not viewed one of their movies, but if they are like any other company I would bet that they make sure it is prominently displayed that they edited it so they can get more business.
So.. as I mentioned in another post, why are the studios trying to shut down operations that are actually giving them additional revenue they otherwise would never see? Their willingness to go to all the extra work to make a TV version proves it isn't solely about artistic integrity. To claim that removing 255 F-bombs will damage their reputations is stupid. They simply want to assign more and more rights so they can make DRM more and more restrictive until you can't even watch a recorded movie on a TV different than the one it was recorded on. I think it is HBO that is putting flags on their stuff that won't let you watch something you recorded from them after a certain length of time like a week or a month. They want to make it so you have to pay for the original, pay for new formats - if they decide to support it - pay to see it on your portable player, etc. I had old movies on VHS that I paid for and then DVD came out. Some of them are STILL not available on DVD. So, I got a box that strips the Macrovision protection and copied them to DVD. Whey should I have to pay again or do without just because a format changes? Fair use previously allowed you to make copies for your protection. Anyone with kids know how quickly a video tape or a DVD can be destroyed by a 2 year old. But, the studios put copy protection on everything so you have to buy a new DVD if your 2 year old destroys it. I have a NAS server with over 1TB of disk space and I've ripped all my DVD's to it so if I want to watch one of them, I don't have to go to a media cabinet, search for it, and then go back and put it in the DVD player and hope it hasn't gotten scratched. I simply pull it up on the computer and play it there and I'm done with it. But, they don't want me to do that. They WANT me to buy it multiple times. Well - too bad! I'm not stealing them or reselling them, I'm archiving them in a manner that fits my needs that they don't offer. I WANT to use Linux to handle my media distribution because it means I don't have to buy 4 extra copies of Windows for every computer in the house. This stuff goes way beyond artistic integrity. It goes to iron-clad control even down to which type of computer you can use or not.
Using the argument that there is nothing to stop the altered movie from being shown to someone else and thus causing damage to the artists reputation doesn't match with one of your previous points. If someone buys your work and paints a smiley face on it and then hangs it in their office where other people see it, you could claim that it could hurt your reputation when peope look at it, think it looks stupid and then see your name on it. So, you could force them to not display it publicly. So they put it in their living room where guests see it and the same thing can happen to your reputation. I would imagine that someone renting a Cleanflix movie is going to have friends like them who don't want the dirty version either. I have friends that use foul language and do things I don't approve of, and I don't watch movies with them or got to clubs with them. If I do, I know what I am getting myself in for. They know the same thing in the reverse.
Personally, I wouldn't care too much about this because I would just figure - good that the studios aren't going to get some sales from people that wouldn't wstch their movies if they're not cleaned up. But, in this case I think they are using it as a stepping stone to assign rights to themselves that will be used later to ask for even more DRM legislation. THAT is what bothers me about this ruling. I think the fact that companies like Cleanflix buy a DVD for each one they sanitize and therefore don't deprive the studios of their money proves their point. When is the last time you heard of a studio taking someone to court that was making them money they otherwise wouldn't have gotten? The fact that they are is proof that there is an underlying agenda that they feel will make them even more money in the long run and that is making DRM more and more restrictive so they can charge you three times for the same thing.
On Friday, December 3, 2004, the weather reports said that Saturday would be 67 degrees and partly cloudy. Sunday would have a 70% chance of rain.
Saturday morning, I woke up to rain dumping down, and it rained all day and into the night.
Sunday was a nice, beautiful day in the mid-60's.
These guys can't even get the weather right for the next two days, but they want me to believe their climage change models and make drastic changes that will negatively affect us economically and lower our lifestyle!
Amazing.
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But... those businesses, along with buggy makers, liveries, etc., were faced with competition from a different form of the same industry. The buggy maker competed against cars. They are both transportation, and the other businesses were support systems for the outdated method of transportation.
Now, the music companies are competing with a new form of the music market and they are fighting it rather than adjusting to it. They are like the buggy makers who had money and influence who got laws passed that required a car going through town to be preceded by a person on foot with a flag - they tried to make it too hard to use a car so they would go back to the horse and buggy. It didn't work then, and it isn't working now.
CD stores are the modern day equivalent to the blacksmith, buggy whip makers, or more directly, the dealers that sold buggy's. When the business you are supporting goes under, you're going to go under with it. It's sad, but that is the way it is.
The music companies in many cases fed the piracy movement. By disallowing the ability to purchase only the songs someone wanted, they encouraged people to find other ways of getting that song. Why spend $20 on an entire CD when your friends are telling you that there are only one or two good songs on it? Or, you've listened to it and only like a couple of songs?
I've been a computer consultant for 20 years. My business today is far different than when I started because I had to change and adapt with the times. When I started out, most of my money was made by building PC's and selling them locally. At the time, I could sell if to double my cost and they would save almost half of what an IBM would coat. Now, Costco sells the whole system with monitor for less than what my cost of the parts would be. So... I adapted my business to survive. Other consultant's I know just complained about Costco and are now working for them, or Best Buy.
Quit whining and figure out how to adapt your business or accept the sad truth that you'll have to shut down and do something else. That is the way it has always been in a capitalist system, and that's the way it will always be.
I'm sorry about your business - I truly am - but putting your head in the sand and blaming everyone else isn't going to bring customers back in. Advertise theme nights where you play CD's from certain types of music, mixed in with the popular bands so people will hear music they didn't know about and buy the CD. Sponsor dance parties at a local club and set up a place to sell CD's with that genre of music there. Hire a good marketing person to give you ideas if you can't think of them yourself.
Good luck, I hope it works out for you. Nobody likes to hear of a family losing their livelihood and home.
The skyrocketing price of oil was caused in large part by speculatative commodity investors who thought that with all the furor going on with Iran would cause Iran to cut back on their oil production and drive the price up. Reality eventually set in and they realized that Iran depends on their oil income for survival. They certainly don't bring in a lot of tourism dollars. Also, investors begain realizing that OPEC no longer controls the majority of our oil imports. The number one source of our oil imports is Canada, not the Middle East. That is the reason oil prices are going down. Oil companies are making record profits, but they average about .08 per gallon of profit. Most of what we pay for fuel is eaten up by taxes and costs. Also, most of the oil companies earnings aren't even from the USA but throughout the world.
So... I guess you can continue to believe your conspiracy theory, but it isn't based in fact. BTW, I make my living by investing in the commodity and Forex market so if I were wrong about this, I wouldn't be able to afford to fill up my BMW convertible. :)
I think the word you are looking for in your signature is actually: floccipaucinihilipilification - the act of estimating as worthless.
When people get a DVD from Cleanflix, they know it will be different to substantially different from the original movie. Cleanflix doesn't put a list of all the stuff that was cut out of it at the beginning of the movie. It is edited and their customers know that even if they don't know exactly what was taken out or changed.
Cleanflix isn't hiding the fact or misleading people that the movie they send you is the same thing as the original. The customers don't WANT the original and 99% of them would never rent, buy or watch the movie if it weren't edited. I've not viewed one of their movies, but if they are like any other company I would bet that they make sure it is prominently displayed that they edited it so they can get more business.
So.. as I mentioned in another post, why are the studios trying to shut down operations that are actually giving them additional revenue they otherwise would never see? Their willingness to go to all the extra work to make a TV version proves it isn't solely about artistic integrity. To claim that removing 255 F-bombs will damage their reputations is stupid. They simply want to assign more and more rights so they can make DRM more and more restrictive until you can't even watch a recorded movie on a TV different than the one it was recorded on. I think it is HBO that is putting flags on their stuff that won't let you watch something you recorded from them after a certain length of time like a week or a month. They want to make it so you have to pay for the original, pay for new formats - if they decide to support it - pay to see it on your portable player, etc. I had old movies on VHS that I paid for and then DVD came out. Some of them are STILL not available on DVD. So, I got a box that strips the Macrovision protection and copied them to DVD. Whey should I have to pay again or do without just because a format changes? Fair use previously allowed you to make copies for your protection. Anyone with kids know how quickly a video tape or a DVD can be destroyed by a 2 year old. But, the studios put copy protection on everything so you have to buy a new DVD if your 2 year old destroys it. I have a NAS server with over 1TB of disk space and I've ripped all my DVD's to it so if I want to watch one of them, I don't have to go to a media cabinet, search for it, and then go back and put it in the DVD player and hope it hasn't gotten scratched. I simply pull it up on the computer and play it there and I'm done with it. But, they don't want me to do that. They WANT me to buy it multiple times. Well - too bad! I'm not stealing them or reselling them, I'm archiving them in a manner that fits my needs that they don't offer. I WANT to use Linux to handle my media distribution because it means I don't have to buy 4 extra copies of Windows for every computer in the house. This stuff goes way beyond artistic integrity. It goes to iron-clad control even down to which type of computer you can use or not.
Using the argument that there is nothing to stop the altered movie from being shown to someone else and thus causing damage to the artists reputation doesn't match with one of your previous points. If someone buys your work and paints a smiley face on it and then hangs it in their office where other people see it, you could claim that it could hurt your reputation when peope look at it, think it looks stupid and then see your name on it. So, you could force them to not display it publicly. So they put it in their living room where guests see it and the same thing can happen to your reputation. I would imagine that someone renting a Cleanflix movie is going to have friends like them who don't want the dirty version either. I have friends that use foul language and do things I don't approve of, and I don't watch movies with them or got to clubs with them. If I do, I know what I am getting myself in for. They know the same thing in the reverse. Personally, I wouldn't care too much about this because I would just figure - good that the studios aren't going to get some sales from people that wouldn't wstch their movies if they're not cleaned up. But, in this case I think they are using it as a stepping stone to assign rights to themselves that will be used later to ask for even more DRM legislation. THAT is what bothers me about this ruling. I think the fact that companies like Cleanflix buy a DVD for each one they sanitize and therefore don't deprive the studios of their money proves their point. When is the last time you heard of a studio taking someone to court that was making them money they otherwise wouldn't have gotten? The fact that they are is proof that there is an underlying agenda that they feel will make them even more money in the long run and that is making DRM more and more restrictive so they can charge you three times for the same thing.
On Friday, December 3, 2004, the weather reports said that Saturday would be 67 degrees and partly cloudy. Sunday would have a 70% chance of rain. Saturday morning, I woke up to rain dumping down, and it rained all day and into the night. Sunday was a nice, beautiful day in the mid-60's. These guys can't even get the weather right for the next two days, but they want me to believe their climage change models and make drastic changes that will negatively affect us economically and lower our lifestyle! Amazing.