Ok, so Universal is lowering the SRP to $12.99 -- call it $13.00, since that 99-cent marketing crap annoys me. That basically admits that the they're selling was extremely overpriced before the cuts. And unless they've made some fundamental changes and improvements to their infrastructure, that would facilitate the level of cost savings that could justify such a mammoth price cut, I don't think anything's changed. Their manufacturing prices are still microscopic, the artists still receive a pittance for the music they produce, and Universal still spends way more than it should be on middlemen and marketing (aka pop artist development).
No, I still think CDs are still a rip-off, even at $13 a pop. At $13, CDs are the same price as they would be if every CDs was covered by the terms of the pending CD settlement. Besides, CDs are still being churned out with DRM that (unreasonably, I feel) restricts how I use the goods I have legally purchased. And there's been no headway made in addressing what rights, if any, the RIAA believes users have when they purchase music. Right now, it seems as though each CD is a "license" to use the music in a very restricted fashion, at a very unattractive price. So why should I have any more reason to buy music now than when I did before?
I recently sold back my entire CD collection to Wherehouse Music for ~$150 store credit, picked up a bunch of DVDs instead. For the money, I get a lot more enjoyment out of movies than I do mainstream-label music, and without the hassle that comes along with it. And most of the good stuff I've heard as of late anyway is off of indie labels, when I'm hanging out with my friends. Anything else I want, I can get from KaZaA; I mean, if I'm going to be treated like a criminal for the way I use my purchased music, why not behave like a criminal regardless?
A third of all music "consumed" might be downloaded within the next 5 years, but I suspect the vast majority of it won't be paid for. And of the part that IS paid for, I highly doubt that online purchases will comprise 33% of all sales anytime soon. That is, unless music sales falls to a level that makes it possible.
As for on-demand services, it's an easy way to get the movies you want that haven't made it to Blockbuster or NetFlix. But if the movie's available from either one of those places, it doesn't seem to be a very attractive option, given the usage restrictions, for the named price.
"If there is unauthorized access to our network, it opens us up to potential security and privacy vulnerabilities," Gurry said. In fact, there is a yet undisclosed security flaw in Microsoft's IM network and clients, she said.
Because of this unknown flaw, Microsoft is forcing users of several older versions of its own MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients to upgrade to newer versions. Users that have to upgrade have been alerted via e-mail and will soon start to see notifications in their Messenger client, according to Microsoft.
Same story, different decade. There are bugs in the older versions of the product, but the newest version purports to fix these problems. The newest version costs money. Repeat ad nauseum. You can see this in a variety of Microsoft products; for instance:
Windows NT has bugs, but is no longer being supported; users are urged to upgrade to Windows 2000 or newer. Maybe this is a bad example, since NT is fairly old, so I'll toss a few more in for good measure.
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP-1 is the last standalone version of IE; subsequent versions will be built into future versions of Windows. IE6's support of CSS2 doesn't come close to Opera 7.x's, which makes it all the more difficult to develop for it according to the W3's specs. I'm sure CSS2 will be fully supported, and CSS3 halfassedly supported, in the next WindowsIE version, though.
Visual Studio.NET 2003, the 2nd generation of the.NET development IDE, still has bugs that have been around since the first version went gold more than a year. This includes one major usability bug, which reformats one's code when toggling between Design (~WYSIWYG) and HTML (raw code) views: an idea most definitely borrowed from Frontpage. And yet, they claim this feature is too tightly integrated into the application to be fixed in this version -- BUT it will most definitely be addressed in the next version of VS.NET.
I like Microsoft products -- from both an end-user and developer standpoint, they're easy to figure out, well documented and suit a variety of my needs (gaming, programming, researching & shopping). But there's a fundamental problem with allowing any company to escape accountability for the problems it foists upon those who would deign to use it, in the guise of a EULA. Maybe it's time to take more drastics steps to change this kind of behavior.
E-mail is text. Anything else is un-necessary. Why people just HAVE to use lazy-HTML is completely beyond me. People should use Pegasus or some other compliant mailer.
Ah yes.... the standard technocratic motto of "my way is the best, so why do any other options exist?". Get down off of your high horse and either contribute something, or shut up and deal with it.
SCO are lying, thieving, scurilous rumour mongers and sadly getting much too much attention.
Which makes me think: could the whole thing be simply intended to distract our attention from something else happening...? It is a classic ploy.
Frodo and Samwise are about to throw the Ring of Power into the fiery depths of Mount Doom?!
Sorry, but with Microsoft being forced to support TCP/IP and HTML, they have lost the browser wars.
Netscape has essentially been relegated to the scrap heap; Mozilla has neglegible market share; Opera is technically superior, but isn't free. And Microsoft, with its desktop market share hovering at around 95%, has been packaging a built-in, free browser for years now, in the form of Internet Explorer 4.x+. So how in hell do you figure that Microsoft has lost the browser wars?
Yes, Microsoft needs to support TCP/IP and HTML, which it currently does. But that doesn't mean they need to play by the rules. Internet Explorer 6 doesn't support CSS2 properly, and they've had years to fix it up right. And you think the masses are going to defect and buy Opera, or download Mozilla because of that??
It's time you faced the facts -- IE won the browser wars. Theirs isn't the best solution by any means, but it's the cheapest solution around, the easiest to procure and the least difficult to use for a vast majority of desktop users. Internet Explorer in its current incarnation won't be around much longer -- it will soon be a part of the Windows operating system. But that doesn't mean it's going away, either.
So you'd recommend Slackware as a Linux distro that's fairly robust / customizable, but still easy to get up-and-running? And both KDE / Gnome sound cool, but should I be concerned about compatibility with hardware I already possess? Most, if not all of it is from big-name manufacturers -- Lite-On, Intel, Corsair, Western Digital -- so there's at least a decent chance of them offering / supporting Linux drivers (, isn't there?).
I've accepted the fact that I'll be doing most of my gaming on a Windows machine. In fact, I'm not exactly sure what I'd use Linux for, at this point -- I'm an MS web developer, and unless Visual Studio.NET is released sometime this century, I won't be doing my programming on Linux, either.:) But if I could keep it as a utilities box -- for tasks such as checking email and file / webpage serving -- it would still be interesting to try out.
Oh, and as for WinXP, I don't think much of it. Windows 2000 suits my needs perfectly, and I have little need for all the bells and whistles it contains. And be it paranoia or perhaps merely stubborn misinformation, I still believe that WinXP isn't as widely supported as Win2k, where mature, stable drivers are concerned.
On a slightly different topic -- do you think it's possible to contribute to OSS even though I'm not terribly OSS-savvy? I figure assisting with documentation is always a good place to start, but I thought I'd ask..........
Is there really a Linux package that matches WinXP where interface, ease-of-use (and not just to techies), depth of driver compatibility of Windows XP? And I'm talking out-of-the-box....... I'm still wary of delving into Linux myself, as I grew out of my fondness of command-line OSes after MS-DOS 6.1. If so, can you please be specific about what would be a good set of features to start off with?
Again, this isn't a troll, just an honest question. I'm interested in desktop Linux, but I want to minimize my time hacking or cobbling stuff together to get it into a working state.
Due to proprietary mechanical design, MSI only guarantees the compatibility of the MEGA PC with MSI's own Optical Storage Devices:
DVD-ROM: MSI 16x DVD-ROM (MS-8216)
CD-RW: MSI 52x24x52 CD-RW (MS-CR52-A2)
Sorry, but the word 'proprietary' gives me a not-so-fresh feeling. Yes, it's good that there's competition to Shuttle's XPC, but I consider this to be a huge strike against the MEGA 651. Especially considering how similar the feature sets and prices for each SFF box are.
You'll get maximum mileage from your batteries if you only drive the car 20-24 miles per charge; the chart indicates you'd get ~80,000 miles from the batteries. If you max out and drive 80 miles per charge (the maximum range), you'd cut that total down to ~16,000 miles.
At that point, the car really loses it cost effectiveness, as each battery pack costs $2,500. Driving it 80 miles per charge would probably make it as expensive to drive as the Hummer H2. Still, can you imagine what an improvement in battery technology could do for a car like this? It would push the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the car way down............
[The] UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy
Actually, the more piracy there is, the more broadband is needed / utilized. There's absolutely no reason to combat piracy, where growing the broadband market is concerned.
It's an audio file -- it should play on ANY player! Sorry, but DRM in it's current incarnation is a total bunch of crap. If I buy it, I insist on being able to take my music wherever I go and do what I want to do with it, without any artificial impositions on usage. And yes, that includes fair usage copying, which means being able to make copies for friends.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but given the RIAA's recent tactics, I'm not inclined to cut them any slack. So for now, make mine KaZaA (Lite)!
talk to your LOCAL Representative.. not the president. and stop with the chicken little bullshit.
Mmm..... chicken littles. I prefer buffalo sauce on the side, if not applied directly to the spicy little nuggets. Politics are tasty with the right sauces........
I thought that there were some issues in implementing FTTC/FTTH. Something about the last mile........? If not, my bad. But in urban areas, there's no excuse.
Japanese seem to be at least 5 years ahead of the US in many respects, where consumer electronics are concerned. If you've ever been to Akihabara in Tokyo -- an electronics district -- you would realize how much more of a fundamental use the Japanese make use of communications devices. So yes, this might be a bit easier to roll out in Japan, where adoption is concerned.
However, I'm not so sure about the "densely populated" argument. Granted, it doesn't make sense to wire more rural communities -- so start with the densest areas of the biggest US cities. Manhattan is pretty densely populated, and there's a ton of unlit fiber lying beneath the streets. There's no excuse for new buildings that are erected not to be wired with fiber -- and yet, it continues to happen. The biggest reason: telcos have a monopoly, and are content to sit on existing profit margins for as long as possible. If you allowed 3rd parties to provide FTTC / FTTH (Fiber to the Curb / Fiber to the Home) services, I bet you'd see them picking up the pace pretty damn quickly.
And I don't want to hear anything about the US not having had enough time to do a rollout of this scale. When I visited Japan in 1998, they were waaaay behind the curve. At least three NTT central offices that I visited during my stay there had dialup connections to their own backbones in their own offices!
I agree -- the RIAA serves to promote the acts it represents. I agree that the current manner in which they promote cannot continue, or at least on the scale of which it has until now. I agree that, even if the RIAA were to get flushed, the matter of promotion needs to be addressed. But I think such a situation demands a bit more sophistication from the artists themselves.
Artists could still make money, even without the RIAA. In fact, all they need is a halfway decent manner of peddling their wares. Concerts are the perfect example, even now -- the quality of a digital copy usually doesn't approach that of a live experience, and even then, the live experience has value that cannot be obtained through an MP3. And with the RIAA out of the way, even if each artists' sales are lower, the percentage of each dollar that could find its way into their pockets from each track / album sale would be AT LEAST one order of magnitude greater than the current situation. What does an artist make from a single album sale now -- $0.50? $1.00 if they're an AAA act and managed to get a good deal? Those figures seem pretty generous, and distribution / manufacturing costs aren't a significant factor anymore. Advertising and promotion (A&R) is the biggest, and that should be a fixed cost, which the artist should be advised of upfront.
The biggest issue is still how to strike a balance between fair use / file sharing (two sides of a coin) and providing an infrastructure (technological and legal) through which artists can protect their intellectual property and stand to profit from it. Art appreciation is all well and good, but at the end of the day, there's a difference between being able to enjoy an artist's work, and stealing it outright without compensating them. My biggest issue is that I have no way to compensate THEM; I want to make sure my money reaches them without subsidizing the careers of other crappy acts represented by the RIAA (Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson [post-BAD], etc).
the cat's already out of the bag. The real issue here is the existence of the middleman in the music industry. Prices of CDs are artificially inflated by the middleman (the music outfits behind the RIAA), because they control most of the musical output in this country. Consumers want this music, and some continue to purchase at these inflated prices. But when you can get the same music, albeit illegal, from an alternate provider (KaZaA et al.), why bother paying those prices at all?
The solution is to bring the price of music back down to a reasonable level. If consumers are able to more directly compensate the artist for their music, and they can do so at a more granular level (i.e purchase tracks, vs CDs), and the easy of use is comparable to the p2p networks, then I bet you'll see a rebound in purchases. Granted, not all the people who use p2p will buy legit copies -- but I bet you'll see a significant rebound.
This country is long overdue for some overhauls on copyright / fair use law. The RIAA likens consumers who use p2p as criminals, but the RIAA backers have already been convicted for price fixing and routinely screw the artists they purport to represent out of cash. Criminals calling their target market criminals? Even if they're right, it's a matter of the pot calling the kettle black.
The days where the music industry could rob consumers without consequence is coming to an end. Exactly how it turns out is anybody's guess, but consumers are on to the RIAA's schemes and have a found a way to get their music without their shenanigans. Expect to see year-over-year sales to continue to fall until some of these leviathans go belly-up, and artists gain more control over production and licensing -- the way it should be.
And if the artists decide to buy into it, they have only themselves to blame when they find themselves penniless after receiving all that cash up front, and after years of hard work.
Honestly, why is all the blame put squarely on the RIAA? Yes, they are the voice of the music industry zaibatsu, but that doesn't mean they are the only way to get rich, famous or discovered. They're just the easiest way -- that is to say, they offer instant gratification and low long-term rewards. If artists aren't willing to take a chance and do it for themselves, they deserve to get screwed.
Any chance of a detailed description of this?
on
Opengroupware
·
· Score: 1
What is this product, and what exactly is meant by the phrase "this is an MS take-out"? Can anybody give a general overview of what this is all about? The site has already been/.ed, or else I'd be able to check for myself.
Yes, Adobe was outclassed / outgunned and withdrew Premiere from the Mac market. And it may be that Macs are wonderful for video editing. But the fact remains that that the overall Macintosh market size is still miniscule compared with the potential that lies in the PC market. That means they can focus on the larger, more promising PC market, which by most estimates is at least 15x the size of the Mac market. Even if they're not the best act in town, they can still probably achieve a higher level of profitability in the PC market without being #1 or #2 in overall sales (e.g. Apple / Avid).
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, so Universal is lowering the SRP to $12.99 -- call it $13.00, since that 99-cent marketing crap annoys me. That basically admits that the they're selling was extremely overpriced before the cuts. And unless they've made some fundamental changes and improvements to their infrastructure, that would facilitate the level of cost savings that could justify such a mammoth price cut, I don't think anything's changed. Their manufacturing prices are still microscopic, the artists still receive a pittance for the music they produce, and Universal still spends way more than it should be on middlemen and marketing (aka pop artist development).
No, I still think CDs are still a rip-off, even at $13 a pop. At $13, CDs are the same price as they would be if every CDs was covered by the terms of the pending CD settlement. Besides, CDs are still being churned out with DRM that (unreasonably, I feel) restricts how I use the goods I have legally purchased. And there's been no headway made in addressing what rights, if any, the RIAA believes users have when they purchase music. Right now, it seems as though each CD is a "license" to use the music in a very restricted fashion, at a very unattractive price. So why should I have any more reason to buy music now than when I did before?
I recently sold back my entire CD collection to Wherehouse Music for ~$150 store credit, picked up a bunch of DVDs instead. For the money, I get a lot more enjoyment out of movies than I do mainstream-label music, and without the hassle that comes along with it. And most of the good stuff I've heard as of late anyway is off of indie labels, when I'm hanging out with my friends. Anything else I want, I can get from KaZaA; I mean, if I'm going to be treated like a criminal for the way I use my purchased music, why not behave like a criminal regardless?
A third of all music "consumed" might be downloaded within the next 5 years, but I suspect the vast majority of it won't be paid for. And of the part that IS paid for, I highly doubt that online purchases will comprise 33% of all sales anytime soon. That is, unless music sales falls to a level that makes it possible.
As for on-demand services, it's an easy way to get the movies you want that haven't made it to Blockbuster or NetFlix. But if the movie's available from either one of those places, it doesn't seem to be a very attractive option, given the usage restrictions, for the named price.
"If there is unauthorized access to our network, it opens us up to potential security and privacy vulnerabilities," Gurry said. In fact, there is a yet undisclosed security flaw in Microsoft's IM network and clients, she said.
.NET 2003, the 2nd generation of the .NET development IDE, still has bugs that have been around since the first version went gold more than a year. This includes one major usability bug, which reformats one's code when toggling between Design (~WYSIWYG) and HTML (raw code) views: an idea most definitely borrowed from Frontpage. And yet, they claim this feature is too tightly integrated into the application to be fixed in this version -- BUT it will most definitely be addressed in the next version of VS.NET.
Because of this unknown flaw, Microsoft is forcing users of several older versions of its own MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger clients to upgrade to newer versions. Users that have to upgrade have been alerted via e-mail and will soon start to see notifications in their Messenger client, according to Microsoft.
Same story, different decade. There are bugs in the older versions of the product, but the newest version purports to fix these problems. The newest version costs money. Repeat ad nauseum. You can see this in a variety of Microsoft products; for instance: Windows NT has bugs, but is no longer being supported; users are urged to upgrade to Windows 2000 or newer. Maybe this is a bad example, since NT is fairly old, so I'll toss a few more in for good measure.
Internet Explorer 6.0 SP-1 is the last standalone version of IE; subsequent versions will be built into future versions of Windows. IE6's support of CSS2 doesn't come close to Opera 7.x's, which makes it all the more difficult to develop for it according to the W3's specs. I'm sure CSS2 will be fully supported, and CSS3 halfassedly supported, in the next WindowsIE version, though.
Visual Studio
I like Microsoft products -- from both an end-user and developer standpoint, they're easy to figure out, well documented and suit a variety of my needs (gaming, programming, researching & shopping). But there's a fundamental problem with allowing any company to escape accountability for the problems it foists upon those who would deign to use it, in the guise of a EULA. Maybe it's time to take more drastics steps to change this kind of behavior.
E-mail is text. Anything else is un-necessary. Why people just HAVE to use lazy-HTML is completely beyond me. People should use Pegasus or some other compliant mailer.
Ah yes.... the standard technocratic motto of "my way is the best, so why do any other options exist?". Get down off of your high horse and either contribute something, or shut up and deal with it.
SCO are lying, thieving, scurilous rumour mongers and sadly getting much too much attention.
Which makes me think: could the whole thing be simply intended to distract our attention from something else happening...? It is a classic ploy.
Frodo and Samwise are about to throw the Ring of Power into the fiery depths of Mount Doom?!
Sorry, but with Microsoft being forced to support TCP/IP and HTML, they have lost the browser wars.
Netscape has essentially been relegated to the scrap heap; Mozilla has neglegible market share; Opera is technically superior, but isn't free. And Microsoft, with its desktop market share hovering at around 95%, has been packaging a built-in, free browser for years now, in the form of Internet Explorer 4.x+. So how in hell do you figure that Microsoft has lost the browser wars?
Yes, Microsoft needs to support TCP/IP and HTML, which it currently does. But that doesn't mean they need to play by the rules. Internet Explorer 6 doesn't support CSS2 properly, and they've had years to fix it up right. And you think the masses are going to defect and buy Opera, or download Mozilla because of that??
It's time you faced the facts -- IE won the browser wars. Theirs isn't the best solution by any means, but it's the cheapest solution around, the easiest to procure and the least difficult to use for a vast majority of desktop users. Internet Explorer in its current incarnation won't be around much longer -- it will soon be a part of the Windows operating system. But that doesn't mean it's going away, either.
Check it out either on MSNBC, the MobileMag article, or the company site (Korean).
So you'd recommend Slackware as a Linux distro that's fairly robust / customizable, but still easy to get up-and-running? And both KDE / Gnome sound cool, but should I be concerned about compatibility with hardware I already possess? Most, if not all of it is from big-name manufacturers -- Lite-On, Intel, Corsair, Western Digital -- so there's at least a decent chance of them offering / supporting Linux drivers (, isn't there?).
.NET is released sometime this century, I won't be doing my programming on Linux, either. :) But if I could keep it as a utilities box -- for tasks such as checking email and file / webpage serving -- it would still be interesting to try out.
I've accepted the fact that I'll be doing most of my gaming on a Windows machine. In fact, I'm not exactly sure what I'd use Linux for, at this point -- I'm an MS web developer, and unless Visual Studio
Oh, and as for WinXP, I don't think much of it. Windows 2000 suits my needs perfectly, and I have little need for all the bells and whistles it contains. And be it paranoia or perhaps merely stubborn misinformation, I still believe that WinXP isn't as widely supported as Win2k, where mature, stable drivers are concerned.
On a slightly different topic -- do you think it's possible to contribute to OSS even though I'm not terribly OSS-savvy? I figure assisting with documentation is always a good place to start, but I thought I'd ask..........
Is there really a Linux package that matches WinXP where interface, ease-of-use (and not just to techies), depth of driver compatibility of Windows XP? And I'm talking out-of-the-box....... I'm still wary of delving into Linux myself, as I grew out of my fondness of command-line OSes after MS-DOS 6.1. If so, can you please be specific about what would be a good set of features to start off with?
Again, this isn't a troll, just an honest question. I'm interested in desktop Linux, but I want to minimize my time hacking or cobbling stuff together to get it into a working state.
Due to proprietary mechanical design, MSI only guarantees the compatibility of the MEGA PC with MSI's own Optical Storage Devices:
DVD-ROM: MSI 16x DVD-ROM (MS-8216)
CD-RW: MSI 52x24x52 CD-RW (MS-CR52-A2)
Sorry, but the word 'proprietary' gives me a not-so-fresh feeling. Yes, it's good that there's competition to Shuttle's XPC, but I consider this to be a huge strike against the MEGA 651. Especially considering how similar the feature sets and prices for each SFF box are.
Cost per Mile (ICE vs Tango)
You'll get maximum mileage from your batteries if you only drive the car 20-24 miles per charge; the chart indicates you'd get ~80,000 miles from the batteries. If you max out and drive 80 miles per charge (the maximum range), you'd cut that total down to ~16,000 miles.
At that point, the car really loses it cost effectiveness, as each battery pack costs $2,500. Driving it 80 miles per charge would probably make it as expensive to drive as the Hummer H2. Still, can you imagine what an improvement in battery technology could do for a car like this? It would push the TCO (total cost of ownership) of the car way down............
[The] UK's broadband boom is likely to falter unless more progress is made towards combating digital piracy
Actually, the more piracy there is, the more broadband is needed / utilized. There's absolutely no reason to combat piracy, where growing the broadband market is concerned.
There's no difference between iTunes and BuyMusic, except that iTunes might be more consistent in how it looks to infringe upon your fair-use rights.
"Damnit, we keep threatening to sue these people, and the fuckers still won't buy our products."
You know SCO's desperate when they start trying to copy the RIAA's marketing strategies.........
It's an audio file -- it should play on ANY player! Sorry, but DRM in it's current incarnation is a total bunch of crap. If I buy it, I insist on being able to take my music wherever I go and do what I want to do with it, without any artificial impositions on usage. And yes, that includes fair usage copying, which means being able to make copies for friends.
Maybe I'm being unrealistic, but given the RIAA's recent tactics, I'm not inclined to cut them any slack. So for now, make mine KaZaA (Lite)!
talk to your LOCAL Representative.. not the president. and stop with the chicken little bullshit.
Mmm..... chicken littles. I prefer buffalo sauce on the side, if not applied directly to the spicy little nuggets. Politics are tasty with the right sauces........
Oops, too late.
the difference between Opera and Mozilla Firebird to me?
I thought that there were some issues in implementing FTTC/FTTH. Something about the last mile........? If not, my bad. But in urban areas, there's no excuse.
Japanese seem to be at least 5 years ahead of the US in many respects, where consumer electronics are concerned. If you've ever been to Akihabara in Tokyo -- an electronics district -- you would realize how much more of a fundamental use the Japanese make use of communications devices. So yes, this might be a bit easier to roll out in Japan, where adoption is concerned.
However, I'm not so sure about the "densely populated" argument. Granted, it doesn't make sense to wire more rural communities -- so start with the densest areas of the biggest US cities. Manhattan is pretty densely populated, and there's a ton of unlit fiber lying beneath the streets. There's no excuse for new buildings that are erected not to be wired with fiber -- and yet, it continues to happen. The biggest reason: telcos have a monopoly, and are content to sit on existing profit margins for as long as possible. If you allowed 3rd parties to provide FTTC / FTTH (Fiber to the Curb / Fiber to the Home) services, I bet you'd see them picking up the pace pretty damn quickly.
And I don't want to hear anything about the US not having had enough time to do a rollout of this scale. When I visited Japan in 1998, they were waaaay behind the curve. At least three NTT central offices that I visited during my stay there had dialup connections to their own backbones in their own offices!
I agree -- the RIAA serves to promote the acts it represents. I agree that the current manner in which they promote cannot continue, or at least on the scale of which it has until now. I agree that, even if the RIAA were to get flushed, the matter of promotion needs to be addressed. But I think such a situation demands a bit more sophistication from the artists themselves.
Artists could still make money, even without the RIAA. In fact, all they need is a halfway decent manner of peddling their wares. Concerts are the perfect example, even now -- the quality of a digital copy usually doesn't approach that of a live experience, and even then, the live experience has value that cannot be obtained through an MP3. And with the RIAA out of the way, even if each artists' sales are lower, the percentage of each dollar that could find its way into their pockets from each track / album sale would be AT LEAST one order of magnitude greater than the current situation. What does an artist make from a single album sale now -- $0.50? $1.00 if they're an AAA act and managed to get a good deal? Those figures seem pretty generous, and distribution / manufacturing costs aren't a significant factor anymore. Advertising and promotion (A&R) is the biggest, and that should be a fixed cost, which the artist should be advised of upfront.
The biggest issue is still how to strike a balance between fair use / file sharing (two sides of a coin) and providing an infrastructure (technological and legal) through which artists can protect their intellectual property and stand to profit from it. Art appreciation is all well and good, but at the end of the day, there's a difference between being able to enjoy an artist's work, and stealing it outright without compensating them. My biggest issue is that I have no way to compensate THEM; I want to make sure my money reaches them without subsidizing the careers of other crappy acts represented by the RIAA (Mariah Carey, Michael Jackson [post-BAD], etc).
the cat's already out of the bag. The real issue here is the existence of the middleman in the music industry. Prices of CDs are artificially inflated by the middleman (the music outfits behind the RIAA), because they control most of the musical output in this country. Consumers want this music, and some continue to purchase at these inflated prices. But when you can get the same music, albeit illegal, from an alternate provider (KaZaA et al.), why bother paying those prices at all?
The solution is to bring the price of music back down to a reasonable level. If consumers are able to more directly compensate the artist for their music, and they can do so at a more granular level (i.e purchase tracks, vs CDs), and the easy of use is comparable to the p2p networks, then I bet you'll see a rebound in purchases. Granted, not all the people who use p2p will buy legit copies -- but I bet you'll see a significant rebound.
This country is long overdue for some overhauls on copyright / fair use law. The RIAA likens consumers who use p2p as criminals, but the RIAA backers have already been convicted for price fixing and routinely screw the artists they purport to represent out of cash. Criminals calling their target market criminals? Even if they're right, it's a matter of the pot calling the kettle black.
The days where the music industry could rob consumers without consequence is coming to an end. Exactly how it turns out is anybody's guess, but consumers are on to the RIAA's schemes and have a found a way to get their music without their shenanigans. Expect to see year-over-year sales to continue to fall until some of these leviathans go belly-up, and artists gain more control over production and licensing -- the way it should be.
And if the artists decide to buy into it, they have only themselves to blame when they find themselves penniless after receiving all that cash up front, and after years of hard work.
Honestly, why is all the blame put squarely on the RIAA? Yes, they are the voice of the music industry zaibatsu, but that doesn't mean they are the only way to get rich, famous or discovered. They're just the easiest way -- that is to say, they offer instant gratification and low long-term rewards. If artists aren't willing to take a chance and do it for themselves, they deserve to get screwed.
What is this product, and what exactly is meant by the phrase "this is an MS take-out"? Can anybody give a general overview of what this is all about? The site has already been /.ed, or else I'd be able to check for myself.
Yes, Adobe was outclassed / outgunned and withdrew Premiere from the Mac market. And it may be that Macs are wonderful for video editing. But the fact remains that that the overall Macintosh market size is still miniscule compared with the potential that lies in the PC market. That means they can focus on the larger, more promising PC market, which by most estimates is at least 15x the size of the Mac market. Even if they're not the best act in town, they can still probably achieve a higher level of profitability in the PC market without being #1 or #2 in overall sales (e.g. Apple / Avid).