I can't quote you what a recording session at a studio costs, but I would hazard a guess you can get reasonable work done for less than 100 kilobucks - maybe 25?
Proof please? Please prepare a list of best-selling albums (i.e. the ones people want) of the last few years which were recorded for less than $100,00 (or less than $25,000).
Despite your figures about the Spice Girls, anybody who actually believe that the Spice Girls (or Virgin) made $130,000,000 minus $17,000,000 off of the Spice Girls has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the 'Britney Spears Accounting Myth'.
Although artists like the Spice Girls sell an obscene amount of copies (above 10,000,000) they are quite literally a 1 in 10,000 occurrence. Of the 30,000 albums produced by the major labels each year only 2 or 3 sell that many copies. In fact, 90% of albums released end up losing money. So for the one successful Spice Girls album, there were approximately 9,000 OTHER records each which had similar production costs to the Spice Girls album, which lost money.
To properly do accounting, you need to look at the cost of all of the records, and the sales of all all titles, not just the select few who sell a few, because the best selling artists are in an extreme minority, and are an exception in the record indstry. They are the only artists most people end up hearing about, though, so everybody assumes that everything works out that way.
Since you didn't read the judge's decision, the method she suggested for preventing piracy was to create a registry of songs whose authors have given permission for them to to be distributed for free on Napster, and every transfer would be checked against this. If it didn't appear on the registry, it would refuse transfer. Note that "this is not a metallica song" would not be registered since it's authors did not register it. If you write, perform, and produce such a song, then you can add it to the registry to be traded.
This would be trivial for Napster to do, and there are other methods Napster could use to achieve this. The fact that they don't prevent piracy when they have such easy technical means to do so (as opposed to guns, which the companies have no control over after they are purchased) is the reason why every lawyer on the planet thinks that they will be shut down.
The programmers who actually write the games only get a few cents per copy sold. They charge $20 for a game with only one or two good scenes. Sega is going to go out of business soon! They are trying to uphold their monopoly of distribution by locking out indepdendent programmers who write games. As everybody knows, the programmers don't need Sega, and could make money selling t-shirts or programming live in front of and audience, which is where they make the reasl money. Also, by giving the ROM's away for free they actually increase the sales of games, because people get to try new games out which they wouldn't otherwise. Down with Sega!!! Let's start a buycot!!!
Right, and CNN isn't a news network but Ted Turner's television station.
Slashdot receives tens of millions of page views per day, which generates billions of dollars in profit each year for Commander Taco. His influence rivals that of any of the major news executives in the US, and therefore he needs to exercise more responsibility in his attempts to sway public opinion, before he is asked to step down, or shut down by government legislation (c.f. the equal access laws, for example).
Of course, if the president of NBC used his "editorial control" to make such an outrageous abuse of media control, he would be promptly asked to resign.
It's actually pretty surprising Commander Taco would prefer Gore over Bush. At least Bush would try to get him lower capital gains taxes on his multi-billion dollar Linux stock portfolio. Bush would probably find a way to get Commander Taco's eighth brand new Ferrari purchase to be tax-exempt also. Perhaps this isn't Commander Taco's true opinion, but his content advisors have urged to vote for the guy who invented the internet? The democrats, last I checked, were not so friendly to media moguls such as Commander Taco.
No, it's not. The MP3 recording was most likely made from a CD and while that guy owned the albums, they are two different recordings (because, for example, they are remastered).
Louis Armstrong's Hot Five's and Seven's records are out of copyright and at least three record companies have re-issued them on CD, but they own the recording on the CD, which has been cleaned up to remove the surface noise. It would be illegal to copy the CD version, but legal if you copied the original 78 RPM record. If not, then the record companies could just copy each other's recording (some of which are much better remastered than the others!)
Hmmm... something like 99% of all rolling paper is used to roll joints instead of cigarettes... ever see EZ-whip cartidges for sale at your local headshop? How many people do you think buy these to make whip-cream instead of getting high off of them? Should water pipes (i.e. bongs) be illegal because they are popular for illegal purposes? Napster has legitimate uses... the fact that it has become popular because people use it to do illegal things does not make it illegal. And even if they were banking on people using it to do illegal things, their actions are still legit.
But you're missing a very huge point (which is the crux of the Napster issue): the manufacturers of rolling paper have no control what happens to the paper after it leaves the factory. Napster has all the control in the world because they run the service. Therefore, they are responsible for insuring that Napster is not used to illegally steal copyrighted materials. Judge Patel goes into this in great detail, and even suggests a strategy for insuring that only legitimate materials are transferred on Napster. Why doesn't Napster do this? It is technically trivial, but they would lose all of their business if they stopped transmission of illegal files, because that's what everybody is after.
On a purely technical level, though, napster should *not* be illegal... it's just software.
Napster is most definitely not "just software". That's the whole point of the lawsuit. It's a service, and requires continual maintenance on the parts of the operators to keep it running. If it was software, it would fall under the same category as guns, locksmithing tools, freenet software, and gnutella software. The Napster client is just software, but the whole enterprise that makes up the Napster experience is much more than just software.
Remember, Napster's main defense for getting the preliminary injunction stayed was that they would lose a tremendous amount of money and lay off lots of employees (interesting claim of course: can prostitution rings, drug cartel, and kiddie porn production centers make similar claims during times of government crackdown?). Yes, the source of most (all?) of their income in venture capital, but obviously they would funding if forced to shut down (and the tremendous risk of being shut down for real has probably greatly increased investors wariness).
Any music which you are not familiar with will sound "all the same" until you are familiar with it. People have said that about jazz, pop, classical, heavy metal, techno, hip hop, punk - anything in existence. If you think any genre "sounds all the same", I submit that you are not familiar enough with it to be able to understand what the different artists are trying to achieve. I would say that you need to be familiar with at least 100 recordings of a genre, and have read several books about it, before you are qualified to even begin considering judging it.
Something like country is tremendously diverse, and is also one of the oldest recorded musics. Few music lovers don't love older country to begin with, and when you add things like alt.country and bluegrass and contry-folk (each of which have a bunch of different sub-genres), you have a tremedously respectable music, and inarguarbly one of American's two or three finest traditions.
Of course, if all you've heard is Shania Twain and whatever else they play on the radio, you've missed out. Like any genre, the best country music is not played on the radio. Judging country music by Garth Brooks makes about as much sense as judging jazz by hearing only Kenny G, metal by only Bon Jovi, rap by only Snoop Dogg, and classical only by Charlotte Church. For any genre you need to dig deeper than the tunes played on the radio, and country (and hip-hop, and jazz, and...) are no different.
Much of Schoenberg's music is painful, but some is beautiful such as Verklarte Nacht. Pierrot Lunaire is very listenable as well, but not really beutiful. A lot of his other stuff is really painful, and I'm ve been trying to listen to it for years without success. Maybe someday! They said it took the world almost a hundred years to digest Beethoven's late string quartets, which are now considered some of the best music ever composed, so we have time with Schoenberg yet.
Oh man. This post is documented proof of the failure of America's education system. Wow. Most classical fans can pinpoint the composer and piece (out of a repertoire which is about 100 times as big and diverse as pop/industrial/country/goth/punk/metal conglomerate) in seconds, because the music is so distinctive. The clueless masses just hear a bunch of violins and think it's all the same, because they are not properly educated to differentiate it. Pathetic.
When Metallica told Napster to ban 300K users, it was because of a filename which does not infringe on copyright.
Proof please? You need to provide proof to backup this outrageous claim. For starters, they did not prosecute users who were trading concert versions of the songs. If they just searched for keywords, how would they have weeded these out? Please provide proof as a documented source that they used keywords as a sole means of monitoring the users.
Well, you're partially correct...Naxos does have a huge catalogue of established names in classical music. If you're out to get some Mozart or some Stravinsky, you'd be completely nuts to get any other version but the Naxos one (in Europe, at least, I don't know if their stuff comes out in the US as well). I'm not so sure if they're not RIAA-afilliated in some way, though - their distribution is extremely well put together, much better than that of your average independent company. This is just a suspicion, however.
Xenakis and Stockhausen are definitely "specialized" and would not appeal to almost anybody. I have many not so fond memories of buying their import CD's in the US for $20 and up. Naxos is great for pieces you haven't heard before, and lots and lots of their recordings stand up with the best, but they do have a habit of not duplicating repertoire, and if you get stuck with a dud, you have to buy a more expensive version. Would you rather hear some no-name pianist from Hungary perform Beethoven's piano sonatas, or Rubinstein, Serkin, or Pollini? Naxos is certainly an extremely valuable label, but I certainly wouldn't consider it to be foolish to buy standard repertoire on full priced issues (if the reviews warrant it).
And speaking of Stockhausen, I'd be rather interested of his opinions on Napster. He has been quoted as indicating that he would rather that nobody performs his work besides his own, and runs his own label and publishing service, with only a couple of other issues escaping and still in print.
But again, these are fringe styles that are not very popular with a wide audience and hence there's not a whole lot of money to be made from it, just like there's not that many people who are into Zimbabwean goth or Turkmeni grindcore.
I certainly wouldn't call bluegrass and folk fringe styles. They as not as popular as pop music, for whatever reason, but they are not at all inaccessible. I think it's more a matter of fashion. Many hipsters wouldn't be caught dead listening to some old white guys playing mandolin and banjo, regardless of the beauty of the music.
The classical minors tend to be released on very small independent labels only (and yes, you're right, they're hideously expensive. I'd be swimming in Stockhausen cd's if this weren't the case), which more or less proves my point that truly independent music tends to be of interest only to a small group of people. Here in Holland you can get Bach at your local drugstore, but you'll have to search long and hard to pick up anything by John Cage (canonical though he may be) or Xenakis.
Deutsche Grammophon is most definitely NOT a non-RIAA label. They are a big part of Polygram which is THE BIGGEST record company in the world. However, they used to be one of the great labels, before they decided classical music wasn't profitable any more, and essentially stopped making it. I will continue to buy their records, as I am clueful enough to value the music, not the business practice which went into making it.
All that said, I think that boycotting the RIAA because it's trying to shut down a pure piracy operation like Napster is ludicrous... The RIAA deserves a boycott for pushing Britney Spears, 'NSync, and the Backstreet Boys to the top...
What is the bigger crime - standing up for your property rights, or giving the people what they want? Teen pop music is fine, but a scapegoat: the music is not successful because companies are trying to market it, but because the educational system has failed us. Students in school are no longer taught about Mahler, Shostakovich, or Brucker, but are told relativistically that the today's trobbing, primitive, tribal rock music is as valid as those "dead white guys". Don't like today's music? You who asked for tax cuts to the educational system got what you paid for.
If you want to avoid RIAA and the majors, you'll have to dig very, very deep to find your music, and the music you'll find may actually not be very much to your liking. Most underground music is underground for a very good reason: it only appeals to a very small group of people. If you're into Zimbabwean goth played on bagpipes or Turkmeni grindcore, you could live a very happy, fulfilled life having nothing to do with the RIAA, but if your taste is slightly more mainstream, you'll have somewhat of a problem.
Not really. Almost all new classical music is completely independent of the major labels; in fact, most of the major levels have completely ceased their classical operations aside from cruft such as Charlotte Church and the like. Naxos, which is a highly respected budget label, puts out great quality new music for $6 / CD, though most of the classical minors are more expensive. Classical is also extremely well documented; it is easy to find out about the artists and what the best recordings are. Of course, it is also the most meaningful and emotion music in production!
Music such as folk and bluegrass is also almost completely independent of major labels (bluegrass, in particular, is perhaps the most commercially uncompromising music of the 20th century - it never sold out like all of the teen rebel music such as punk/industrial/ska/etc. did in the 80's and 90's).
So what is next. Can Chevrolet be sued because: "A great many cars are transporting drugs across the border -- Their big trunks and fast engines are just too powerful, and can carry too much. They must be stopped".
Nope. A truck is a product, and Chevrolet relinquishes all control when somebody buys it. They don't have any control or even visibility of what it's used for. Napster is a service, and requires constant maintenance by the owners to facilitate the illegal piracy which takes place on the service.
If you look at any contributory copyright infringement court case, they readily distinguish between products and services: the diamond Rio and VCR's were legal because they were products, but things like radio was declared as having to pay royalities, because they are services.
The "Napster is just a tool" argument is completely irrelevant to this case because it is not a tool - it is a service. The judge specifically raised this issue in the injunction. There has never been a case where a service which was deemed to be contributing to copyright infringement was allowed to continue as is.
I dont think that you need a social theory background to understand what is happening here. There is an OVERWHELIMG demand for a way to trade music online; Something that, by itself, is not illegal. The RIAA is being so shortsighted and foolish in this matter by targeting the medium, not the demand. THAT is why people are so upset. Not becuase we want our WAREZ d00dZ!
Many record companies ARE putting music online and charging for it. It didn't get much press, but last week Capitol put up Dark Side on the Moon for sale online, the first mainstream major label album to have done so. You have to give them time so they can figure it how to do it securely and profitably. They are not going to put everything up insecure, and without a business plan, because doing so would be commercial suicide. Likewise it would be foolish for themselves to not defend themselves against a blatantly illegal service such as Napster, so you may questions their exact tactics in doing so.
So you can do process of elimination.
The List. Please note that in the Napster case the RIAA is not representing all of its members (Sony is a notable exception).
For high quality indie labels, I recommend Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, Rounder, and Hightone.
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops.
Yes, but is it really bug if it can't actually be hit with a program? I'm sure there are latent bugs in (say) Windows NT 4.0 which nobody has ever hit, so should those count towards the bug list? They certainly are not very severe.
This is a bit of a stretch, as they insinuate that sharing MP3's is as criminal as stealing a CD from the store. Many people didn't see Napster as illegal since everyone was doing it and there were not any real consequences or explicit warnings from Napster...plus, some viewed it as synonymous to sharing tapes, since the quality is worse (kinda like recording off the radio) and besides, until this trial, no real law has been defined around MP3's.
I think that's their point: Napster has desensitized people to illegal theft, and those engaged in it do think twice (or usually even once) about their actions and just keep on stealing. The scary part, for people who advocate compensation of artists and developers for their work, is that these people have only been engaged in this activity for a few years. In a few years, kiddies will have grown up using only this technology, and the concept of paying for content will seem absurd to them. If you work as a software devloper, musician, system admin, web developer, or the like, your career will be severely curbed (unless you want to moonlight as a t-shirt maker!)
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I can't quote you what a recording session at a studio costs, but I would hazard a guess you can get reasonable work done for less than 100 kilobucks - maybe 25?
Proof please? Please prepare a list of best-selling albums (i.e. the ones people want) of the last few years which were recorded for less than $100,00 (or less than $25,000).
Despite your figures about the Spice Girls, anybody who actually believe that the Spice Girls (or Virgin) made $130,000,000 minus $17,000,000 off of the Spice Girls has fallen hook, line, and sinker for the 'Britney Spears Accounting Myth'.
Although artists like the Spice Girls sell an obscene amount of copies (above 10,000,000) they are quite literally a 1 in 10,000 occurrence. Of the 30,000 albums produced by the major labels each year only 2 or 3 sell that many copies. In fact, 90% of albums released end up losing money. So for the one successful Spice Girls album, there were approximately 9,000 OTHER records each which had similar production costs to the Spice Girls album, which lost money.
To properly do accounting, you need to look at the cost of all of the records, and the sales of all all titles, not just the select few who sell a few, because the best selling artists are in an extreme minority, and are an exception in the record indstry. They are the only artists most people end up hearing about, though, so everybody assumes that everything works out that way.
90% of bands are let out of contracts after their first album.
Since you didn't read the judge's decision, the method she suggested for preventing piracy was to create a registry of songs whose authors have given permission for them to to be distributed for free on Napster, and every transfer would be checked against this. If it didn't appear on the registry, it would refuse transfer. Note that "this is not a metallica song" would not be registered since it's authors did not register it. If you write, perform, and produce such a song, then you can add it to the registry to be traded.
This would be trivial for Napster to do, and there are other methods Napster could use to achieve this. The fact that they don't prevent piracy when they have such easy technical means to do so (as opposed to guns, which the companies have no control over after they are purchased) is the reason why every lawyer on the planet thinks that they will be shut down.
The programmers who actually write the games only get a few cents per copy sold. They charge $20 for a game with only one or two good scenes. Sega is going to go out of business soon! They are trying to uphold their monopoly of distribution by locking out indepdendent programmers who write games. As everybody knows, the programmers don't need Sega, and could make money selling t-shirts or programming live in front of and audience, which is where they make the reasl money. Also, by giving the ROM's away for free they actually increase the sales of games, because people get to try new games out which they wouldn't otherwise. Down with Sega!!! Let's start a buycot!!!
Right, and CNN isn't a news network but Ted Turner's television station.
Slashdot receives tens of millions of page views per day, which generates billions of dollars in profit each year for Commander Taco. His influence rivals that of any of the major news executives in the US, and therefore he needs to exercise more responsibility in his attempts to sway public opinion, before he is asked to step down, or shut down by government legislation (c.f. the equal access laws, for example).
Of course, if the president of NBC used his "editorial control" to make such an outrageous abuse of media control, he would be promptly asked to resign.
It's actually pretty surprising Commander Taco would prefer Gore over Bush. At least Bush would try to get him lower capital gains taxes on his multi-billion dollar Linux stock portfolio. Bush would probably find a way to get Commander Taco's eighth brand new Ferrari purchase to be tax-exempt also. Perhaps this isn't Commander Taco's true opinion, but his content advisors have urged to vote for the guy who invented the internet? The democrats, last I checked, were not so friendly to media moguls such as Commander Taco.
No, it's not. The MP3 recording was most likely made from a CD and while that guy owned the albums, they are two different recordings (because, for example, they are remastered). Louis Armstrong's Hot Five's and Seven's records are out of copyright and at least three record companies have re-issued them on CD, but they own the recording on the CD, which has been cleaned up to remove the surface noise. It would be illegal to copy the CD version, but legal if you copied the original 78 RPM record. If not, then the record companies could just copy each other's recording (some of which are much better remastered than the others!)
Hmmm... something like 99% of all rolling paper is used to roll joints instead of cigarettes... ever see EZ-whip cartidges for sale at your local headshop? How many people do you think buy these to make whip-cream instead of getting high off of them? Should water pipes (i.e. bongs) be illegal because they are popular for illegal purposes? Napster has legitimate uses... the fact that it has become popular because people use it to do illegal things does not make it illegal. And even if they were banking on people using it to do illegal things, their actions are still legit.
But you're missing a very huge point (which is the crux of the Napster issue): the manufacturers of rolling paper have no control what happens to the paper after it leaves the factory. Napster has all the control in the world because they run the service. Therefore, they are responsible for insuring that Napster is not used to illegally steal copyrighted materials. Judge Patel goes into this in great detail, and even suggests a strategy for insuring that only legitimate materials are transferred on Napster. Why doesn't Napster do this? It is technically trivial, but they would lose all of their business if they stopped transmission of illegal files, because that's what everybody is after.
On a purely technical level, though, napster should *not* be illegal... it's just software.
Napster is most definitely not "just software". That's the whole point of the lawsuit. It's a service, and requires continual maintenance on the parts of the operators to keep it running. If it was software, it would fall under the same category as guns, locksmithing tools, freenet software, and gnutella software. The Napster client is just software, but the whole enterprise that makes up the Napster experience is much more than just software.
I recommend that you read the RIAA's complaint, which will answer most of your questions.
Remember, Napster's main defense for getting the preliminary injunction stayed was that they would lose a tremendous amount of money and lay off lots of employees (interesting claim of course: can prostitution rings, drug cartel, and kiddie porn production centers make similar claims during times of government crackdown?). Yes, the source of most (all?) of their income in venture capital, but obviously they would funding if forced to shut down (and the tremendous risk of being shut down for real has probably greatly increased investors wariness).
Where is Powell's computer museum? i.e., which store/location is it in? I never noticed it at Powell's technical, which would be the logical choice.
Any music which you are not familiar with will sound "all the same" until you are familiar with it. People have said that about jazz, pop, classical, heavy metal, techno, hip hop, punk - anything in existence. If you think any genre "sounds all the same", I submit that you are not familiar enough with it to be able to understand what the different artists are trying to achieve. I would say that you need to be familiar with at least 100 recordings of a genre, and have read several books about it, before you are qualified to even begin considering judging it.
...) are no different.
Something like country is tremendously diverse, and is also one of the oldest recorded musics. Few music lovers don't love older country to begin with, and when you add things like alt.country and bluegrass and contry-folk (each of which have a bunch of different sub-genres), you have a tremedously respectable music, and inarguarbly one of American's two or three finest traditions.
Of course, if all you've heard is Shania Twain and whatever else they play on the radio, you've missed out. Like any genre, the best country music is not played on the radio. Judging country music by Garth Brooks makes about as much sense as judging jazz by hearing only Kenny G, metal by only Bon Jovi, rap by only Snoop Dogg, and classical only by Charlotte Church. For any genre you need to dig deeper than the tunes played on the radio, and country (and hip-hop, and jazz, and
Much of Schoenberg's music is painful, but some is beautiful such as Verklarte Nacht. Pierrot Lunaire is very listenable as well, but not really beutiful. A lot of his other stuff is really painful, and I'm ve been trying to listen to it for years without success. Maybe someday! They said it took the world almost a hundred years to digest Beethoven's late string quartets, which are now considered some of the best music ever composed, so we have time with Schoenberg yet.
Same for most classical, country and pop.
Oh man. This post is documented proof of the failure of America's education system. Wow. Most classical fans can pinpoint the composer and piece (out of a repertoire which is about 100 times as big and diverse as pop/industrial/country/goth/punk/metal conglomerate) in seconds, because the music is so distinctive. The clueless masses just hear a bunch of violins and think it's all the same, because they are not properly educated to differentiate it. Pathetic.
When Metallica told Napster to ban 300K users, it was because of a filename which does not infringe on copyright.
Proof please? You need to provide proof to backup this outrageous claim. For starters, they did not prosecute users who were trading concert versions of the songs. If they just searched for keywords, how would they have weeded these out? Please provide proof as a documented source that they used keywords as a sole means of monitoring the users.
Well, you're partially correct...Naxos does have a huge catalogue of established names in classical music. If you're out to get some Mozart or some Stravinsky, you'd be completely nuts to get any other version but the Naxos one (in Europe, at least, I don't know if their stuff comes out in the US as well). I'm not so sure if they're not RIAA-afilliated in some way, though - their distribution is extremely well put together, much better than that of your average independent company. This is just a suspicion, however.
Xenakis and Stockhausen are definitely "specialized" and would not appeal to almost anybody. I have many not so fond memories of buying their import CD's in the US for $20 and up. Naxos is great for pieces you haven't heard before, and lots and lots of their recordings stand up with the best, but they do have a habit of not duplicating repertoire, and if you get stuck with a dud, you have to buy a more expensive version. Would you rather hear some no-name pianist from Hungary perform Beethoven's piano sonatas, or Rubinstein, Serkin, or Pollini? Naxos is certainly an extremely valuable label, but I certainly wouldn't consider it to be foolish to buy standard repertoire on full priced issues (if the reviews warrant it).
And speaking of Stockhausen, I'd be rather interested of his opinions on Napster. He has been quoted as indicating that he would rather that nobody performs his work besides his own, and runs his own label and publishing service, with only a couple of other issues escaping and still in print.
But again, these are fringe styles that are not very popular with a wide audience and hence there's not a whole lot of money to be made from it, just like there's not that many people who are into Zimbabwean goth or Turkmeni grindcore.
I certainly wouldn't call bluegrass and folk fringe styles. They as not as popular as pop music, for whatever reason, but they are not at all inaccessible. I think it's more a matter of fashion. Many hipsters wouldn't be caught dead listening to some old white guys playing mandolin and banjo, regardless of the beauty of the music.
The classical minors tend to be released on very small independent labels only (and yes, you're right, they're hideously expensive. I'd be swimming in Stockhausen cd's if this weren't the case), which more or less proves my point that truly independent music tends to be of interest only to a small group of people. Here in Holland you can get Bach at your local drugstore, but you'll have to search long and hard to pick up anything by John Cage (canonical though he may be) or Xenakis.
Deutsche Grammophon is most definitely NOT a non-RIAA label. They are a big part of Polygram which is THE BIGGEST record company in the world. However, they used to be one of the great labels, before they decided classical music wasn't profitable any more, and essentially stopped making it. I will continue to buy their records, as I am clueful enough to value the music, not the business practice which went into making it.
All that said, I think that boycotting the RIAA because it's trying to shut down a pure piracy operation like Napster is ludicrous... The RIAA deserves a boycott for pushing Britney Spears, 'NSync, and the Backstreet Boys to the top...
What is the bigger crime - standing up for your property rights, or giving the people what they want? Teen pop music is fine, but a scapegoat: the music is not successful because companies are trying to market it, but because the educational system has failed us. Students in school are no longer taught about Mahler, Shostakovich, or Brucker, but are told relativistically that the today's trobbing, primitive, tribal rock music is as valid as those "dead white guys". Don't like today's music? You who asked for tax cuts to the educational system got what you paid for.
If you want to avoid RIAA and the majors, you'll have to dig very, very deep to find your music, and the music you'll find may actually not be very much to your liking. Most underground music is underground for a very good reason: it only appeals to a very small group of people. If you're into Zimbabwean goth played on bagpipes or Turkmeni grindcore, you could live a very happy, fulfilled life having nothing to do with the RIAA, but if your taste is slightly more mainstream, you'll have somewhat of a problem.
Not really. Almost all new classical music is completely independent of the major labels; in fact, most of the major levels have completely ceased their classical operations aside from cruft such as Charlotte Church and the like. Naxos, which is a highly respected budget label, puts out great quality new music for $6 / CD, though most of the classical minors are more expensive. Classical is also extremely well documented; it is easy to find out about the artists and what the best recordings are. Of course, it is also the most meaningful and emotion music in production!
Music such as folk and bluegrass is also almost completely independent of major labels (bluegrass, in particular, is perhaps the most commercially uncompromising music of the 20th century - it never sold out like all of the teen rebel music such as punk/industrial/ska/etc. did in the 80's and 90's).
So what is next. Can Chevrolet be sued because: "A great many cars are transporting drugs across the border -- Their big trunks and fast engines are just too powerful, and can carry too much. They must be stopped".
Nope. A truck is a product, and Chevrolet relinquishes all control when somebody buys it. They don't have any control or even visibility of what it's used for. Napster is a service, and requires constant maintenance by the owners to facilitate the illegal piracy which takes place on the service.
If you look at any contributory copyright infringement court case, they readily distinguish between products and services: the diamond Rio and VCR's were legal because they were products, but things like radio was declared as having to pay royalities, because they are services.
The "Napster is just a tool" argument is completely irrelevant to this case because it is not a tool - it is a service. The judge specifically raised this issue in the injunction. There has never been a case where a service which was deemed to be contributing to copyright infringement was allowed to continue as is.
I dont think that you need a social theory background to understand what is happening here. There is an OVERWHELIMG demand for a way to trade music online; Something that, by itself, is not illegal. The RIAA is being so shortsighted and foolish in this matter by targeting the medium, not the demand. THAT is why people are so upset. Not becuase we want our WAREZ d00dZ!
Many record companies ARE putting music online and charging for it. It didn't get much press, but last week Capitol put up Dark Side on the Moon for sale online, the first mainstream major label album to have done so. You have to give them time so they can figure it how to do it securely and profitably. They are not going to put everything up insecure, and without a business plan, because doing so would be commercial suicide. Likewise it would be foolish for themselves to not defend themselves against a blatantly illegal service such as Napster, so you may questions their exact tactics in doing so.
So you can do process of elimination.
The List. Please note that in the Napster case the RIAA is not representing all of its members (Sony is a notable exception).
For high quality indie labels, I recommend Hyperion, Harmonia Mundi, Rounder, and Hightone.
What Fred Moody forgets is that Windows is just as complicated an OS as Linux, and therefore, probably had just as many programming "mistakes" made which resulted in bugs. They're hidden... and he assumes they therefore don't exist. Oops.
Yes, but is it really bug if it can't actually be hit with a program? I'm sure there are latent bugs in (say) Windows NT 4.0 which nobody has ever hit, so should those count towards the bug list? They certainly are not very severe.
This is a bit of a stretch, as they insinuate that sharing MP3's is as criminal as stealing a CD from the store. Many people didn't see Napster as illegal since everyone was doing it and there were not any real consequences or explicit warnings from Napster...plus, some viewed it as synonymous to sharing tapes, since the quality is worse (kinda like recording off the radio) and besides, until this trial, no real law has been defined around MP3's.
I think that's their point: Napster has desensitized people to illegal theft, and those engaged in it do think twice (or usually even once) about their actions and just keep on stealing. The scary part, for people who advocate compensation of artists and developers for their work, is that these people have only been engaged in this activity for a few years. In a few years, kiddies will have grown up using only this technology, and the concept of paying for content will seem absurd to them. If you work as a software devloper, musician, system admin, web developer, or the like, your career will be severely curbed (unless you want to moonlight as a t-shirt maker!)