i'll take you one step further... take your laptop (with wireless LAN) to a coffee shop (these days, nearly all of them have wireless LAN support) and ONLY steal music from there... many public libraries also have wireless, free LANs... librarians have refused for years on censorship grounds NOT to monitor or report internet use by library patrons...
Exactly. The RIAA will be buried. They need to embrace the i-tunes model before it's too late. However... once "busted".... lots of problems remain for the RIAA to make their case. peace axeman
How does the 1-song model work for new artists? Do they no longer have to come up with full albums? You'd end up with tons more bands just trying to come up with that one song instead of a whole new sound, no? Just asking... I don't really care too much either way.
classic. (great info, btw)... a more obvious irony is the SONY label (member of RIAA) which also sells CD burners...one of the biggest sellers by market share (at least they were 1 year or 2 ago, as I recall)... who says you can't make $$$ both ways!!! nothing like playing both sides ... of course, the only brand of burner you should EVER buy anyway is plextor...highly recommended by yours truly, F.B. Bungrider III... http://www.plextor.com/english/products/products.html
One thing I find interesting about the whole issue is: How is the music publishing industry any different from the book publishing industry? I can walk into my local library and check out a book, does the author receive any royalty from my action? Are we not sharing the work of the author with another person without adequate payment/compensation? The author received compensation for the original sale of the book, but, does not get anything from any future reader. Please don't respond with the "you only have one disk/one user agreements". I heard one of the idiots from KISS on the radio the other day complaining about how the public shouldn't be able to tell him how he should run his business. I totally agree, however, the bury your head in the sand and disregard the obvious change in technology and marketplace will find you in one location....... BROKE!!!! Plenty of examples of stubborn out of business management here in the US and worldwide. Whatever you want to call it, theft/file sharing, is shrinkage the industry failed to recognize and combat. Now to sue the end users, whom are potential customers is a very intelligent business move. Later, Cracked
Yeah, it's always hilarious when you hear someone who obviously has NO IDEA of how to run a successful business model open their stupid mouth. "Artists" must have their hands held every step of the way by recording management, otherwise they'd be fucked. Either way, they still get fucked, since the recording industry keeps most of their profits anyway. Suckers! Did you see those whiny artists get in front of Congress 6 months ago and bitch about how the recording industry has taken 90% of the revenue generated from the album sales?? WHOSE FAULT IS THAT?? Reject hollywood culture. Like dennis leary said, what is it about famous people that they think once they get famous they can go around telling us how to live and think about important issues??? Bunch of retards, all of them.
Two points. First, I could as easily say, ok one day I have no trading articles, then I go over to your house and photocopy a hundred old articles from your old trading mag's. That's classic fair use. Did I commit "theft"? Does it become theft if I let someone else copy them? To me it is not so clear as to warrant all this moral outrage. If the law gets too far ahead of what people consider reasonable, there are usually problems. Just look at the massive violations of drug laws. Second, this is purely statutory. The copyright laws can be changed at any time. The labels have no constitutional right to abuse their copyrights to rip people off. Congress could easily legalize some form of file sharing. I don't care what the RIAA may claim publicly, those headlines were a PR disaster for the industry.
The idiot from KISS fails to realize that his whole business model is dependent on a gift from Congress, which can be taken away at any time. But his statement is typical of the contempt these "artists" have for their customers.
You can take out CD's from most well stocked libraries too. But you can't take that book or CD and make copies, much less distribute a copy to thousands of others.
This is my forte so I'll take a stab at this entire debate. First of all, we should place a distinction between "property theft" and "copyright infringement." According to the law, these are two separate laws that cover different activities. By providing for download a song through the Kazaa network, I am engaging in "copyright infringement." This is not theft in the eyes of the law -- although it could be considered such through a moral standpoint. Morality aside, the riaa choose to fight P2P networks instead of embrace them. They should have approached P2P networks as another form of radio. What is the difference between recording a song I requested on the radio and downloading a song from Kazaa? Convenience, perhaps, but the bigger question is why the riaa is choosing to blame a drop in CD sales on consumers using P2P networks instead of realizing a basic Econ 101 tenant that states that luxury items (which CD's fall under) are the first things to suffer during a depressionary cycle. Also, a lot of people aren't aware that the CD-R's you purchase have a tax levied on them through an agreement with the riaa and congress that states that all recordable media sold must give X amount to the MPAA and riaa to cover piracy. In essence, they are already assuming some people will pirate music and recover from that my levying a surcharge on every consumer. On the grounds of morality, the riaa has no right to take the high ground. They have already lost a federal case because of their price fixing during the 1990's. Everyone who purchased a CD during that time is due a refund -- however once court costs and lawyer fees, distribution of check fees (logistics) plays into account, nobody will receive much at all. So on a moral level, it is morally acceptable for a large organization to fix prices and gouge customers and then SUE their consumers years later when we want to exchange music and find out which bands we would eventually like to see in concert or support? The RIAA's business model won't last much longer. I know that everyone I speak with refuses to purchase CD's and now we're more intent than ever to download as much music as we want. If we like the group a lot, we'll check out their info and support them through concerts, t-shirts, coffee mugs or even Paypal if need be. Even if the riaa were able to shut down every filesharing individual in the USA, there are still millions upon millions of Canadians that can share their music LEGALLY through Canadian law. When I was 12 years old, I knew how stupid I was. If the riaa wants to resort to lawsuits aimed at kids who aren't even in their teens yet, then they've just put one extra nail in their coffin. It may not be tomorrow or next month that the riaa starts to falter, but eventually their business model of suing music fans will be their own undoing. Copyright laws / Fair Use provisions need some drastic changes. Many of these laws are antiquated and don't reflect how society has changed during the information technology revolution. Had the riaa been a little smarter and embraced P2P, encouraged the fans of music to sample and exchange music and placed respectable prices on their music, they wouldn't be in the mess they are right now. What they need to do is get a few Gen X and Gen Y people up within their executive ranks and give the old brass a clue as to how American consumers think in today's society.