THE RIAA VERSUS THE PEOPLE WHO BUY MUSIC AND MOVIES
"New developments have made piracy easy and delightful. The Recording Industry Association of America is up in arms and up in the air over these developments. They have tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce legislation prohibiting this 'unauthorized re-recording'.
How ironic this is. These are the same record companies that acquiesced years ago in allowing radio stations to play their records without fees despite the inscription "not licensed for radio broadcast - for home use in phonographs" on the labels.
The record companies shafted live music then and are now being hoisted by their own petard." - Charles Suber - From his regular column in Downbeat Magazine, "The First Chorus" - February 18, 1960
Yes, 1960. As most people know, the RIAA is currently staging a battle over piracy that's going all the way to the Supreme Court. What most people probably don't know is that the RIAA has been singing this same song since the advent of the radio, the tape recorder, the video tape recorder, CD-ROM burner, DVD-ROM burner, and now, especially, Peer-to-Peer software clients, or file-sharing.
So, according to the RIAA, the radio was going to kill the sale of LPs. Then, when it didn't, they were certain that the tape recorder would. Now people would simply record from another old nemesis of theirs, the radio. When that didn't happen, they waited a while and then really freaked out when the video recorder came along. This was going to kill movie theaters and television.
When that didn't happen, it wasn't long before the RIAA was crying about CD burners destroying the sales of CDs. When this didn't happen, they waited and are now really upset about another new development, file sharing, which will surely kill the both the music and film businesses.
After all of these years one would think that these folks might finally get it right. You see, the fools missed out again. In the infancy of file sharing, the RIAA and the record and film companies should have seen what was coming and gotten ready with a viable, affordable and fair offer to consumers, offering them exactly what they wanted and what they were going to soon get for free.
Incredibly, the RIAA missed the boat again. A really big boat too. Instead they are back to the same strategy they so unsuccessfully employed in 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990, which is to complain, threaten, harass and decide that your friend can't let his friend borrow some music or video that he has. Now they want the government to tell us that our friend can't borrow or music or films.
Ironically, CD sales reached new levels in 2004 and leading the pack of buyers were those that routinely download music from the Internet. It has been statistically proven that people who download music buy more CDs than those that don't.
Even Apple saw this one coming, and has gotten on the boat, sort of, considering the file format they are offering is not MP3, WAV, but in their own proprietary format, something they have a long history of doing. Then there's the new Napster. If you discontinue the service, meaning you stop paying them, your files that you downloaded and paid them a monthly fee for doing so, suddenly become unplayable.
What are these people thinking?
Doesn't the RIAA realize that it is precisely this community of people, the ones that they want to litigate, that are the same people that are leading the way and setting future trends for the industry? Downloading music and films is obviously a very preferred method of obtaining these mediums, so why didn't the RIAA see this coming, like the rest of the world did, and get involved in it early?
The answer is arrogance and the audacity to put themselves and their profits above the artists who create it and the people who buy it.
"The record companies shafted live music then and are now being hoisted by their own petard." - Charles Suber - 1960 - Downbeat Magazine.
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THE RIAA VERSUS THE PEOPLE WHO BUY MUSIC AND MOVIES "New developments have made piracy easy and delightful. The Recording Industry Association of America is up in arms and up in the air over these developments. They have tried, unsuccessfully, to introduce legislation prohibiting this 'unauthorized re-recording'. How ironic this is. These are the same record companies that acquiesced years ago in allowing radio stations to play their records without fees despite the inscription "not licensed for radio broadcast - for home use in phonographs" on the labels. The record companies shafted live music then and are now being hoisted by their own petard." - Charles Suber - From his regular column in Downbeat Magazine, "The First Chorus" - February 18, 1960 Yes, 1960. As most people know, the RIAA is currently staging a battle over piracy that's going all the way to the Supreme Court. What most people probably don't know is that the RIAA has been singing this same song since the advent of the radio, the tape recorder, the video tape recorder, CD-ROM burner, DVD-ROM burner, and now, especially, Peer-to-Peer software clients, or file-sharing. So, according to the RIAA, the radio was going to kill the sale of LPs. Then, when it didn't, they were certain that the tape recorder would. Now people would simply record from another old nemesis of theirs, the radio. When that didn't happen, they waited a while and then really freaked out when the video recorder came along. This was going to kill movie theaters and television. When that didn't happen, it wasn't long before the RIAA was crying about CD burners destroying the sales of CDs. When this didn't happen, they waited and are now really upset about another new development, file sharing, which will surely kill the both the music and film businesses. After all of these years one would think that these folks might finally get it right. You see, the fools missed out again. In the infancy of file sharing, the RIAA and the record and film companies should have seen what was coming and gotten ready with a viable, affordable and fair offer to consumers, offering them exactly what they wanted and what they were going to soon get for free. Incredibly, the RIAA missed the boat again. A really big boat too. Instead they are back to the same strategy they so unsuccessfully employed in 1960, 1970, 1980 and 1990, which is to complain, threaten, harass and decide that your friend can't let his friend borrow some music or video that he has. Now they want the government to tell us that our friend can't borrow or music or films. Ironically, CD sales reached new levels in 2004 and leading the pack of buyers were those that routinely download music from the Internet. It has been statistically proven that people who download music buy more CDs than those that don't. Even Apple saw this one coming, and has gotten on the boat, sort of, considering the file format they are offering is not MP3, WAV, but in their own proprietary format, something they have a long history of doing. Then there's the new Napster. If you discontinue the service, meaning you stop paying them, your files that you downloaded and paid them a monthly fee for doing so, suddenly become unplayable. What are these people thinking? Doesn't the RIAA realize that it is precisely this community of people, the ones that they want to litigate, that are the same people that are leading the way and setting future trends for the industry? Downloading music and films is obviously a very preferred method of obtaining these mediums, so why didn't the RIAA see this coming, like the rest of the world did, and get involved in it early? The answer is arrogance and the audacity to put themselves and their profits above the artists who create it and the people who buy it. "The record companies shafted live music then and are now being hoisted by their own petard." - Charles Suber - 1960 - Downbeat Magazine.