It's called Bittorrent. Search for it on google or check this site out for more info. http://www.suprnova.org
3.7 million users online at 840 am cst . Usually a little over 4 million so it looks like the warnings had some impact. My predictions: 1. Lots of lawyers will make $$; 2. CD sales sink further; 3. New anonymous and encrypted p2p networks will arise. Some already in the works: Freenet, Earth Station 5, and WASTE to name a few. And, PeerGuardian is supposed to block the bots that are being used to collect the data to be used in the criminal cases. DS
Whether a CD only has one good tune on it or not isn't the issue - if you want to buy a bunch of CDs and extract individual tunes and build your own consolidated CD, you can do that without infringing on copyrights. It's when you rip the tracks and start sharing them with a bunch of other people that you cross the line. Nor is it an issue of whether the music industry has or hasn't "morphed" themselves into whatever business model some group of people think they should have. Their not changing their business the way you think they should isn't a justification for theft. The bottom line is that copyright infringement and stealing of copyrighted material is illegal. For some reason, as long as it's bits and bytes, people seem to think it's no big deal. Lack of a material object is enough for them to rationalize it and pretend it's not stealing. But if you were lucky and recorded a CD and managed to sell perhaps a half million copies but later found out that there were over 3 million pirate copies out there, wouldn't you be just a bit pissed off over all the royalties you were being cheated out of?? Too many people think that buying a CD means they own the material on it and can do whatever they want to with it. The scariest part of all this is how many people don't care or think there's anything wrong with stealing other people's property. It's become very easy for them to rationalize their theft as something the people they're stealing from have done. It's like a guy holding up a bank and explaining that it's really THEIR fault because the bank hasn't "morphed" their business into all electronic cash. You don't have to break into a house or use a gun to steal CD tracks with ripping software and MP3 file share sites. Being able to click and drag in order to steal someone else's property somehow makes it OK for a lot of people. Personally, I think it would be great if they were able to shut down a bunch of the pirates. Maybe at least some people would suddenly realize that what they've been doing is theft. Unfortunately, it's more likely to just produce the next generation of stolen property shareware and further entrench theft of non-material property as acceptable.
Bare in mind that "theft" and "stealing" are not related to this. This is copyright infringement, which is handled by a completely different set of laws. I'm not justifying the act, but it is important that we compare apples to apples. All of the relevant copyright laws are right here: http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/index.html Theft is when I take your personal property. Copyright infringement is when I make a copy of something you own without your permission -- whether for my own enjoyment or for profit. Fair Use has been thrown out the window. The RIAA is basically a cartel that buys the laws it needs from policy makers. Everytime you buy a blank recordable tape or CD, you are paying an additional tax on that item that is given directly to the RIAA. I'm not trying to stand on the high moral ground. The RIAA is just as guilty of illegal practices as the individual users. The riaa recently lost a price-fixing lawsuit where there was proven collusion of prices for CDs. The morality aside, the riaa is just making one bad business blunder after another. They are still working with a 1960's business model in an age where computers and information technology / transfer are dominating the world. They need to get rid of their antiquated business model and quickly invent a new one. The only effect of the RIAA's recent decision is to just push the development of new stealth P2P networks into high gear. Once users become untraceable in tandem with the fact that the courts have sided with content distribution companies, the only recourse the riaa will have then is to basically come up with a better model. They haven't even touched the surface with USENET distribution, IRC distribution and other methods that are extremely hard to trace and detect. The demand will drive supply, and if the riaa tries to stop the supply, they'll simply force current supply methods to evolve into some other non-detectable form. A lot of bands are going more underground. The whole structure of the riaa is amazingly bad. They spend millions of dollars on bands like N'Sync and Brittany Spears and get them to produce some bubble-gum POP music that teens will run to the store and buy. The problem is that these artists have no talent and are really entertainers and NOT musicians. I expect to get a CD with music, not trash as filler to support the one song that is halfway decent. I'm not paying $17 for a CD to get one song. The riaa stopped selling singles in the mid 90's, so I'm left with one alternative -- to get it elsewhere.
Here is an interesting essay from an artist (link at end) on why the RIAA's approach to new technology is wrong again (they fought reel to reel tapes for those of us who can remember back when that was the latest and greatest technology). One quick quote from it: "The NARAS[run the Grammies} people were a bit more pushy. They told me downloads were "destroying sales", "ruining the music industry", and "costing you money". Costing me money? I don't pretend to be an expert on intellectual property law, but I do know one thing. If a music industry executive claims I should agree with their agenda because it will make me more money, I put my hand on my walletâ¦and check it after they leave, just to make sure nothing's missing. Am I suspicious of all this hysteria? You bet. Do I think the issue has been badly handled? Absolutely. Am I concerned about losing friends, opportunities, my 10th Grammy nomination by publishing this article? Yeah. I am. But sometimes things are just wrong, and when they're that wrong, they have to be addressed. The premise of all this ballyhoo is that the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading. Nonsense. Let's take it from my personal experience. My site gets an average of 75,000 hits a year. Not bad for someone whose last hit record was in 1975. When Napster was running full-tilt, we received about 100 hits a month from people who'd downloaded Society's Child or At Seventeen for free, then decided they wanted more information. Of those 100 people (and these are only the ones who let us know how they'd found the site), 15 bought CDs. Not huge sales, right? No record company is interested in 180 extra sales a year. But⦠that translates into $2700, which is a lot of money in my book. And that doesn't include the ones who bought the CDs in stores, or who came to my shows. " The author: Janis Ian. http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html DS PS-after I sampled some of her songs that I had not heard in over 20 years, I went out a got a couple of her CDs.
That is absolutely right. One of the ways Metallica got big was by allowing the distribution of bootlegs at their smaller concerts. Word spread and they got signed and the rest is history. (Funny how they then started sueing their once loyal fans because their fans were using Napster) Ask the group "50 Cent" how they feel about Kazaa. They love it. Kazaa lets people sample music and be the judge of what THEY want to hear. Before it was the RIAA and what they wanted played on the Radio. This entire lawsuit isn't ultimately about money. The RIAA won't collect anything meaningful from a bunch of poor college kids. This is only about power and control. The RIAA doesn't like the control that it has lost due to internet usage. Have you ever seen the breakdown of where all the money goes when you purchase a $17 CD? Besides marketing, distribution and the cost to make the product itself (a nickel per CD if that), a majority of the money goes to the RIAA and "some" goes to the artist, based on their contract and what type of agreement they have. Those that are more popular have a greater leverage with their contract agreements. However, if you are a new band, you sign a deal with the devil (RIAA). They agree to market you and, in return, you agree to a ridiculously low royalty payout. Enter the internet. Now I, a music connoisseur, can freely select a type of music and listen to artists that are actually musicians and not entertainers. If I find someone I like, I want to research more about them. If there music is good and I really enjoy it, I'd rather cut them a check for $10, burn their 320kbps tracks onto a CD and bypass the entirely flawed model that the RIAA currently employs. The RIAA is starting to realize that they are no longer needed for marketing or distribution. Now it is between the musicians and the people who like to listen to their music. Even if I sent just 2 dollars to the group for their tracks, they would most likely benefit far more than by having an agreement with the RIAA.
aphe, Late last year, I was introduced to a group, WILCO, via file sharing. I found them somewhat by accident. But, I listened to some of their music and loved it. I then contacted one of my sons who is an editor at a entertainment magazine and asked him what he thought of the group. He said not only had he heard of them but they were his favorite group and their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album had received great reviews even considered by some to be the best album of 2002. Long story short, my other son and his girlfriend liked them too. This made Christmas shopping easy as we all filled in each others CD collections of their music and some related groups (Uncle Tupelo and minus 5), about 20 CDs in all were purchased for presents last year. An interesting end note, Wilco has thumbed their nose at Big Music and guess what, even though their album was critically acclaimed, they did not receive one nomination at the Big Music dominated Grammy's. DS
Aphe, Chances are the artist would be better off if you sent them the 2 dollars instead of buying the CD, because most of them get in the 25 cent or less range per CD sold........