With exception to the emailing bit, it's already happened with those of us with broadband connections. In many ways it's been a very good thing to fans of a few series.
Point in case: I'm a big big Stargate-SG1 fan. I've been watching the series for about 2 years now, and every place I've lived I payed for cable with a Showtime package *just* so I could watch that one show (I could care less about the rest of Showtimes original content).
Well, this season (5) has been a real bumber. Showtime has not been airing the new episodes for the past 6 months or so (I think they are blaming it on the Sep 11th attacks -- I shit you not). But the show has been airing on Skyone over in europe. So my solution? I've been downloading the new episodes off IRC 2-4 months in advance! And I decided to not get showtime/cable when I moved this time. Why pay for showtime if they are not going to show the one damn series I care about and I can get download it for free?
All I know is cable/boradcast companies have got to stop pulling this shit and add a little bit more bang for the buck If they don't want to loose a bunch of their consumers to free downloads n' such. I know alot folks over in Europe have this same problem. I remember kids over in the UK that were a full 3 seasons behind when Star Trek DS9 was airing. If that was the case here, I would be downloading the episodes instead of waiting 2 years. And I don't even think I have to say anything about how sci-fi shows get bumped out of thier already wack timeslots due to sports events and such (see superbowl).
*SIGH*. It may be amoral, or some eye for an eye mentality, but damnit -- it corporations feel the need to screw the consumer at every chance they get, I'm going to steal everything thats not nailed down to the floor. That's why I have over 300 gigs of TV shows. Commercials are for suckers.
Man, at least with Audio Galaxy you can remove the spyware with Ad Aware (From Lavasoft). Grokster and Kaaza have taken it to a new level and now require that the spyware exists on your system to run their client. Take out the spyware (like anyone with half a brain would do) and the client ceases to run.
What worries me is that this is the beginning of new trend where all this adware will start this. I'm sure all the rest of the marketing departments in these scum factories will start to do this now.
Ya know, I really wouldn't mind PAYING money for some of these clients (if it was reasonable), but to force someone to run sketchy software reporting back to god knows who with god knows what information is complete bullshit. As far as I'm concerned, all these companies that put spyware in their software are even worse than the RIAA/MPAA/etc. This revenue model is fucked, and I hope that if their is even the slightest hope for humanity that these companies go out of business with the quickness.
BTW, I found out somebody put out a "crack" for Kazza to allow it to run without spyware. That makes me giggle. These companies get what they deserve.
Dude, by that logic, webpages are software as well. They both contain images, media, and a markup language that controls the way that they are displayed.
Actually, from the standpoint of someone who has designed website *AND* dvd's, they are essentialy the same thing.
The only diffrence is that DVD's haven't employed the need to get online and give someone your credit card to access them.
Well, if no Anti-virus software works due to the state of WINE these days, I guess you don't have to worry about virus either. They will most likely just crash as well.
RIAA is putting down "non-signed" bands...
on
Webcasting and the DMCA
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I recently ran into this snag about 2 months ago. My band was playing live on a community radio station in St. Louis (www.kdhx.org) and of course I wanted our fans and friends of mine to listen in, so I sent them I link to the radio station. I remembered the radio station had a live web stream and figured listing online was the easiest thing to do.
As I came to find out, the radio station recently (Like 2 weeks before hand) was forced to shut down their web-stream (a shoutcast server) because the RIAA had threatened to sue them unless the station paid the RIAA some obscene amount of cash (around 500K) to comply with this new charge thanks to the DMCA.
So let's think about this for a second -- My band (unsigned) cannot be heard by our fans because the RIAA thinks they should be getting money from music streams over the internet, in turn, my band playing (not signed to an RIAA partnered label).
What pisses me off the most is comments about the artist deserving the cash, yadda yadda yadda, so the RIAA somehow deserves this cash. That's a bunch of horseshit. I'm obviously not receiving any of this cash for my records being played on the radio, nor my live performances on a station.
In case you didn't know, the RIAA's been screwing the independent musician for DECADES. Take recording for an example: most independent musicians use small 4-track cassette based recorders to put record their music to sell at shows, give to stations, etc. But did you know, ALL blank cassette tapes have a RIAA tax attached to them? So when I buy a blank tape, not to copy a RIAA CD, but to record myself, I give the RIAA around 10%-30% of what I paid for the tape! To record *MY* music. Now they want to start taxing CD-R's, and hardrives. Go to hell guys.
Listen, I'm pleading with all of you -- if this stuff makes you angry, don't just boycott RIAA bands, support non-signed/non-RIAA bands! You don't even have to buy stuff, just go to shows, download free mp3's, anything -- just give the underdogs a chance. It's the last thing the RIAA wants. It's not about controlling their copyrighted materials, it's about controlling music -- who hears it, and what they hear.
I run a small, pretty much non-profit record label (See my URL above). Let me tell you, it's about the hardest thing to do in the world.
First, let's start with the basics. Say I want to do a short run of CD's -- in the neighborhood of 500-1000 (Very modest). Any band that is half decent should unload that amount no sweat. That will cost about $1000 - $1700 (Could be cheaper without things like, oh say, cover artwork and tray/shrinkwrap). So fine, let's say you have that kind of cash just laying around and are feeling charitable. You get your 1000 cd's via UPS (Cost you about 300 bucks in shipping -- that many cd's are heavy) and have it at your apartment/home/whatever. How are you getting this to people? Shipping, of course. -- Costing you about $1.25 per CD for 5-7 day snail mail, or $3.00+ for UPS/Fedex. Larger quantities cost less, but very few people order more than 1 CD at a time. So, it cost you about $2 - $3 dollars right there, just basics. This "CD's cost about $0.20 to make" you here is refering to Major Label deals, where they go and press 100,000,000 Madona CD's and get the sweetest deal you can imagine from the plant. Little labels, however, pay WAY more per CD. (Isn't that funny?)
Ok, We didn't even talk about Hosting fee's (For your website -- you do have a website right?) about 10 - 15 bucks a month (Conservative). Tack on Domain Registration ($50 for 2 years??). On top of that, advertising -- People wont buy ANYTHING if they don't know about it -- So you place a couple ads in a few indie zines -- around $500 a month in advertising (This is small fry shit). The cost continues to rise.
Guess what? Only about 5-10 people buy a CD a month! So you figure, you could really rake it in if you had distribution (Ya know, putting your CD's in stores and all that good stuff). You go shopping for Distributor's. First thing you find, is that NOBODY will touch you unless you have a UPC. So you go looking into getting a UPC code for your CD. Anybody wanna take a guess at how much a freakin' UPC number costs? Anyone? Depending on volume and format, it can run you anywhere from $1200 - $100,000!!!!! This is no lie. For one CD, UPC codes cost you as much, if not more than the actual Pressing costs!
So you get a UPC (Because your a sucker), and then go to talk to the distro houses again. Guess what? They STILL won't touch you until you have a catalog of at least 40 LP's!!! So how excatly do you get the capital together to release 40 records, so you can get distribution, and sell more than 5-10 Stinking CD's per month, and EVER hope to cover your costs and not loose $2000 (Low estimate) on each cd you put out?
I think you know the answer. You either charge what the majors charge (What I do -- about $8 - $13 Per CD), or you give up, go home, and stop trying to put out cd's for people (What I consider doing every day).
It's very very very hard to be an independent. Honestly, I don't know how some of the smaller labels with some degree of integrety left (Dischord, Drag City, K, Kill Rock Stars, etc) manage to do it. All you can hope is that you accidently sign the next Sleater-Kinney, Smog, etc.. It's very discouraging.
That, is why nobody has done this idea -- and succeeded.
Someone else mentioned it already, but they were off the mark about the c64 bit..<br><br>
It was actually Atari 2600 emmulation as I remember correctly. The funny thing was, that if you took any other properly dumped 2600 rom, and renamed it to one of the roms used on the CD (i.e. Pitfall) the emulator that activision provided would almost certainly run it.<br><br>
So all I gotta say is, <b>GO CAPCOM!</b>
Slashdot Mirror
With exception to the emailing bit, it's already happened with those of us with broadband connections. In many ways it's been a very good thing to fans of a few series.
Point in case: I'm a big big Stargate-SG1 fan. I've been watching the series for about 2 years now, and every place I've lived I payed for cable with a Showtime package *just* so I could watch that one show (I could care less about the rest of Showtimes original content).
Well, this season (5) has been a real bumber. Showtime has not been airing the new episodes for the past 6 months or so (I think they are blaming it on the Sep 11th attacks -- I shit you not). But the show has been airing on Skyone over in europe. So my solution? I've been downloading the new episodes off IRC 2-4 months in advance! And I decided to not get showtime/cable when I moved this time. Why pay for showtime if they are not going to show the one damn series I care about and I can get download it for free?
All I know is cable/boradcast companies have got to stop pulling this shit and add a little bit more bang for the buck If they don't want to loose a bunch of their consumers to free downloads n' such. I know alot folks over in Europe have this same problem. I remember kids over in the UK that were a full 3 seasons behind when Star Trek DS9 was airing. If that was the case here, I would be downloading the episodes instead of waiting 2 years. And I don't even think I have to say anything about how sci-fi shows get bumped out of thier already wack timeslots due to sports events and such (see superbowl).
*SIGH*. It may be amoral, or some eye for an eye mentality, but damnit -- it corporations feel the need to screw the consumer at every chance they get, I'm going to steal everything thats not nailed down to the floor. That's why I have over 300 gigs of TV shows. Commercials are for suckers.
Man, at least with Audio Galaxy you can remove the spyware with Ad Aware (From Lavasoft). Grokster and Kaaza have taken it to a new level and now require that the spyware exists on your system to run their client. Take out the spyware (like anyone with half a brain would do) and the client ceases to run.
What worries me is that this is the beginning of new trend where all this adware will start this. I'm sure all the rest of the marketing departments in these scum factories will start to do this now.
Ya know, I really wouldn't mind PAYING money for some of these clients (if it was reasonable), but to force someone to run sketchy software reporting back to god knows who with god knows what information is complete bullshit. As far as I'm concerned, all these companies that put spyware in their software are even worse than the RIAA/MPAA/etc. This revenue model is fucked, and I hope that if their is even the slightest hope for humanity that these companies go out of business with the quickness.
BTW, I found out somebody put out a "crack" for Kazza to allow it to run without spyware. That makes me giggle. These companies get what they deserve.
Dude, by that logic, webpages are software as well. They both contain images, media, and a markup language that controls the way that they are displayed.
Actually, from the standpoint of someone who has designed website *AND* dvd's, they are essentialy the same thing.
The only diffrence is that DVD's haven't employed the need to get online and give someone your credit card to access them.
Oh crap. I hope the MPAA didn't read that.
Well, if no Anti-virus software works due to the state of WINE these days, I guess you don't have to worry about virus either. They will most likely just crash as well.
I recently ran into this snag about 2 months ago. My band was playing live on a community radio station in St. Louis (www.kdhx.org) and of course I wanted our fans and friends of mine to listen in, so I sent them I link to the radio station. I remembered the radio station had a live web stream and figured listing online was the easiest thing to do.
As I came to find out, the radio station recently (Like 2 weeks before hand) was forced to shut down their web-stream (a shoutcast server) because the RIAA had threatened to sue them unless the station paid the RIAA some obscene amount of cash (around 500K) to comply with this new charge thanks to the DMCA.
So let's think about this for a second -- My band (unsigned) cannot be heard by our fans because the RIAA thinks they should be getting money from music streams over the internet, in turn, my band playing (not signed to an RIAA partnered label).
What pisses me off the most is comments about the artist deserving the cash, yadda yadda yadda, so the RIAA somehow deserves this cash. That's a bunch of horseshit. I'm obviously not receiving any of this cash for my records being played on the radio, nor my live performances on a station.
In case you didn't know, the RIAA's been screwing the independent musician for DECADES. Take recording for an example: most independent musicians use small 4-track cassette based recorders to put record their music to sell at shows, give to stations, etc. But did you know, ALL blank cassette tapes have a RIAA tax attached to them? So when I buy a blank tape, not to copy a RIAA CD, but to record myself, I give the RIAA around 10%-30% of what I paid for the tape! To record *MY* music. Now they want to start taxing CD-R's, and hardrives. Go to hell guys.
Listen, I'm pleading with all of you -- if this stuff makes you angry, don't just boycott RIAA bands, support non-signed/non-RIAA bands! You don't even have to buy stuff, just go to shows, download free mp3's, anything -- just give the underdogs a chance. It's the last thing the RIAA wants. It's not about controlling their copyrighted materials, it's about controlling music -- who hears it, and what they hear.
The nice thing about using greek/roman mythology when naming servers is that you can, like I have, name your 0-Day warez dump server "Sisyphus".
I run a small, pretty much non-profit record label (See my URL above). Let me tell you, it's about the hardest thing to do in the world.
First, let's start with the basics. Say I want to do a short run of CD's -- in the neighborhood of 500-1000 (Very modest). Any band that is half decent should unload that amount no sweat. That will cost about $1000 - $1700 (Could be cheaper without things like, oh say, cover artwork and tray/shrinkwrap). So fine, let's say you have that kind of cash just laying around and are feeling charitable. You get your 1000 cd's via UPS (Cost you about 300 bucks in shipping -- that many cd's are heavy) and have it at your apartment/home/whatever. How are you getting this to people? Shipping, of course. -- Costing you about $1.25 per CD for 5-7 day snail mail, or $3.00+ for UPS/Fedex. Larger quantities cost less, but very few people order more than 1 CD at a time. So, it cost you about $2 - $3 dollars right there, just basics. This "CD's cost about $0.20 to make" you here is refering to Major Label deals, where they go and press 100,000,000 Madona CD's and get the sweetest deal you can imagine from the plant. Little labels, however, pay WAY more per CD. (Isn't that funny?)
Ok, We didn't even talk about Hosting fee's (For your website -- you do have a website right?) about 10 - 15 bucks a month (Conservative). Tack on Domain Registration ($50 for 2 years??). On top of that, advertising -- People wont buy ANYTHING if they don't know about it -- So you place a couple ads in a few indie zines -- around $500 a month in advertising (This is small fry shit). The cost continues to rise.
Guess what? Only about 5-10 people buy a CD a month! So you figure, you could really rake it in if you had distribution (Ya know, putting your CD's in stores and all that good stuff). You go shopping for Distributor's. First thing you find, is that NOBODY will touch you unless you have a UPC. So you go looking into getting a UPC code for your CD. Anybody wanna take a guess at how much a freakin' UPC number costs? Anyone? Depending on volume and format, it can run you anywhere from $1200 - $100,000!!!!! This is no lie. For one CD, UPC codes cost you as much, if not more than the actual Pressing costs!
So you get a UPC (Because your a sucker), and then go to talk to the distro houses again. Guess what? They STILL won't touch you until you have a catalog of at least 40 LP's!!! So how excatly do you get the capital together to release 40 records, so you can get distribution, and sell more than 5-10 Stinking CD's per month, and EVER hope to cover your costs and not loose $2000 (Low estimate) on each cd you put out?
I think you know the answer. You either charge what the majors charge (What I do -- about $8 - $13 Per CD), or you give up, go home, and stop trying to put out cd's for people (What I consider doing every day).
It's very very very hard to be an independent. Honestly, I don't know how some of the smaller labels with some degree of integrety left (Dischord, Drag City, K, Kill Rock Stars, etc) manage to do it. All you can hope is that you accidently sign the next Sleater-Kinney, Smog, etc.. It's very discouraging.
That, is why nobody has done this idea -- and succeeded.
g00z
Someone else mentioned it already, but they were off the mark about the c64 bit..<br><br>
It was actually Atari 2600 emmulation as I remember correctly. The funny thing was, that if you took any other properly dumped 2600 rom, and renamed it to one of the roms used on the CD (i.e. Pitfall) the emulator that activision provided would almost certainly run it.<br><br>
So all I gotta say is, <b>GO CAPCOM!</b>