CEO of RIAA Speaks at P2P Conference 550
Sarcasmo writes: "Hillary Rosen, CEO of the RIAA ? , spoke at length (PDF of Speech) yesterday, during the 'O'Reilly Peer to Peer and Web Services conference'. " Update: 11/08 02:15 GMT by H : Yeah, I removed the Rosen text. Sorry.
mp3 please? (Score:5, Funny)
This just in!!! (Score:5, Funny)
A hacker known only as VA Software has been arrested today for attempting to distribute an illegal digital copy of Hilary Rosen's recent speech. The RIAA informed the FBI of the breach of copyright under the DMCA and immediately moved to arrest VA Software.
In other news, the hacker web site known as Slashdot was shut down and one of it's members was arrested for an attack on riaa.com. The attack has been described by sources within Slashdot's membership as the "Slashdot effect."
[/tomorrow's news]
Re:This just in!!! (Score:2)
I bet fewer people click through on this story than on any other today. RIAA web site, yuck.
Really good point (Score:5, Insightful)
Too bad the record companies screw them every which way from Thursday.
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Insightful)
Which came first (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember reading a story about how Lynyrd Skynyrd got screwed out of their royalties. They were all high school dropouts (they were named after the principal of their high school, who threw/pushed them out, Leonard Skinner) and when they were presented with the contract, they could not read. They signed it anyway (without going to a lawyer to interpret it for them) on the side of some interstate in Florida.
So who's worse - the band for being too dumb to know the value of education or to cover their ass, or the record companies for taking advantage of that? In their case, it's about equal, coming from their background. However, there are some artists that have never had a chance for an education, but they have this raw talent, and the record company just rapes them and tosses them out when they get old/fat/non-trendy. It's really a case-by-case thing.
For the record, Lars is an idiot, too
Re:Which came first (Score:3, Interesting)
Even better is the story of the guy who wrote "The Lion Sleeps Tonight." He died penniless in Africa: his family couldn't even afford to buy him a tombstone. Rolling Stone did a whole article about it. A great example of artists getting royally fucked.
Ok... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ok, is it better if I screw some little old lady out of her pension by promising her a great return and getting her to sign over her money to me and then pointing out some bit of fine print that allows me to keep all of it, or if I just steal it all out from under her mattress? Which one makes me an asshole? More specifically does one make me a bigger asshole than the other? This also leaves out the part where record sales were climbing greatly during the P2P peak. Maybe those downloading were still buying?
Re:Ok... (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe the economy was awesome and people had more $$$ to spend on music?
Maybe. But how do you know? They claim Napster would destroy artists because they couldn't make a profit, yet even at Napster's peak, they were raking in record-breaking profits. I think the evidence supports my argument more than theirs. They have yet to show any real damage resulting from file-swapping. That's kind of like accusing someone of murder when everyone can plainly see that the "victim" is alive and well, and just bought a new BMW.
The rest of this post is off-topic. Ignore it if you like.
Damn...this is like the studies that say "concealed carry laws correspond with periods of decreased crime!"
Completely off-topic, but since you mentioned it.... Concealed carry laws don't correspond so much with "periods of decreased crime" as they do with decreased crime in the town/city/state where concealed carry is legal. Obviously other factors must be taken into account as well, but so far, the evidence is on the side of concealed-carry advocates. From what I've read, it's usually a case of the pot calling the kettle black when it comes to opponents of concealed carry. The papers I've read opposing cc take even less into account than the papers in favor of cc. (Btw, I'm not, nor have I ever been, a gun owner. I have read quite a bit about the issue though.)
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Insightful)
Who ever said they have any say about signing the contract? If you'd ever paid any attention to the issue, you'd know that all publishers are members of the music industry cartel, which consipires to 1) keep the contracts all the same, so no one publisher can steal artists by offering a sweeter deal than the others, and 2) keep album prices the same, so no publisher can steal customers by offering a sweeter deal than the others. Of course, because of this they can also make the 'one contract' really shaft the artists, and the 'one album price' also shaft their customers.
In other words, there is no choice for the artists who aren't already rich, and no choice for the fans who aren't already rich. This is fundamental cause of the whole mess. Blaming mp3s does nothing. Even if the entire Internet and every desktop computer vanished, CDs would still cost too much and artists would still be getting shafted.
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically, during the "negotiating" phase of a recording contract, the artist/band is taken out to a nice dinner complete with refreshing drinks. The label rep then scratches out on a napkin or small scrap of paper a tentative agreement to sign a contract. This agreement works out to "if we give you this, that, and the-other-thing - you, the artist/band, agree to sign the recording contract. The artist/band is then asked to sign the napkin/scrap paper and the rep will have those "evil lawyer types" write up the contract. All through this the rep is playing best buddy - who would never do anything against the artist/band's best interests.
Then the artist/band sobers up and receives the contract. They go to a lawyer (if at least a bit bright) and review it first. They find all sorts of ugly conditions in it, and tell the rep "no, can't do this". The rep "works" with them, changing a word here or there, but the essence of the contract terms remain unchanged (this is what you refer to as standardized among all labels). The artist/band says "sorry, I/we'll look elsewhere". The rep then pulls out that napkin/scrap paper and says "Sorry, you said if we gave you 'this', 'that', and 'the-other-thing', you'd sign with us. You didn't say we couldn't add conditions to them, just that you required them... and you signed a legally binding agreement.
The game goes around until the artist/band does one of two things. 1) Caves in and signs the deal. 2) Breaks up and doesn't pursue a contract with another label (essentially going out of business).
Most artists/bands at this point will opt for #1 and hope for the best. Often times, after the first record is completed and even if it does well, the artist/band will still break up and disappear once they realize how bad it really is. This is what generates all of those One-Hit-Wonders. They do a single record and file bankruptcy never again to record professionally.
So, you might say there's a bit of a gun held to their head. It's called a binding agreement even though it's just scribbling on a napkin.
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.nitrorecords.com/
http://www.gashed.com/
http://www.metropolis-records.com/
http://www.fatwreck.com/
http://www.victoryrecords.com/
http://www.dependent.de/
Just to name a few of the bigger ones with more popular bands...there's literally thousands of smaller ones.
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Insightful)
They own all the copyrights, control all the content, and are the only distrubition point. The artists have no choice, and neither do the customers.
PHISH (Score:2)
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Informative)
Technically, a cartel. Otherwise, spot on.
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Interesting)
Correct me if Im wrong, but isnt it illegal in the US to fix prices, collude to rig the market and agree to non-competiton pacts in a given market?
Isnt the very existance of the RIAA (and MPAA for that matter) practically evidence of law-breaking?
Its like gas stations calling one another and pushing the price up...
Re:Really good point (Score:2)
Is that choice sort of like the choice I make to sign my employer's NDA's and papers that say that every idea I have for 5 years are belong to the company?
I mean, I could just go elsewhere, right?
Whoah- strange, that. Everywhere I look has the same "agreements"...
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Funny)
#include <allyourbase.h>
Re:Really good point (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why one reason why Branson and casinos exist. To give old once popular musicians jobs. They probably make a hell of a lot more money doing that than what they get for royalty payments. They probably make more playing bingo than what they get from the RIAA/record labels/whatever.
Besides, who says that once someone becomes popular and then fades from the public spotlight that they must depend on those royalties forever? Unless they were the song writer and someone covered their work, after they stop being popular, what little they were getting before drops substantially. They will get other jobs. Big deal.
The hypocritical part of all this is that the music industry & the RIAA routinely screw the artists over by classifying the recordings as a 'work for hire' product (see the earlier Slashdot article [slashdot.org] about it). If the product is not the artists', why not pay them and everyone else involved a set fee. This would certainly eliminate a big reason for all the tracking and radio station payment crap. Unless my employer has a profit sharing or stock compensation plan, what payback do I get if I write something that makes them a lot of money? Nothing. I get paid to do a job. Why can't these people? If the copyright laws would have stayed the same as they were when the country was founded, none of this would be that big of a deal. However as it stands now, copyrights are being used as a way to try to get on an eternal gravy train. Write a hit song or something else and then milk it for decades as opposed to the original plan: do something creative, get paid for a short amount of time, then it's free. Since the time one could get paid for it was short, if one wanted to do this for a living, the creativity would have to be sustained. Scale the copyright laws back to their original state and pay supporting people wages. None of the p2p stuff would matter then.
Also, she kept referring to all of this as theft of intellectual property. None of this is theft of IP. That would imply that I would take a song and then try to pass it off as my own and deny the creator the appropriate recognition they deserve for it. They aren't losing any IP (well the record companys anyway..the artists do with work for hire contracts). They are just aren't making the obscene profits that they want to make.
Re:Really good point (Score:5, Insightful)
There are two types of songs I download from the net: things I can't fscking get any other way, and things I want to hear before I buy them. If I don't like them, I may not delete them from my disk, but I don't listen to them either. No loss to the artist. If I DO like them, I'll go buy the album.
If I had to make such a choice without hearing the music, I wouldn't buy it at all. I've been burned way too damn many times buying albums with only one decent track (can you say White Town boys & girls?) to do otherwise.
As for the things I can't get any other way...if the RIAA would make their entire catalogs available for a reasonable fee (we're not talking the $1+ per song that it costs to get a physical album these days) for download, I would be straight legit for every single track I have. But of course they aren't really interested in that, they want to resell and resell and resell only the most lucrative portions of their catalogs rather than actually disseminate music to the people who want to hear it.
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Insightful)
They want to force you to keep buying the same album. First it was oooh, look, vinyl! Then it was, if you buy a 8-track, you can play it in your car! The 8-tracks broke too much, so here's a cassette. Cassettes wear out, here's a CD. Unfortunately, CD was almost the perfect medium. They've not been able to get people to switch over to DAT or MiniDisk or DVD-Audio. And, barring some fundamental switch in technology, they won't be able to.
Enter electronic music. People want to download digital bits of music to their portable players -- but the RIAA hasn't figured out a way to get them to pay for it. Preferably, pay for it for each player, and pay for it each time it's played.
But, they aren't looking at what people want and are willing to pay. I'd pay $5 for a CD, and I'd think it was fair for something that costs less to make than a cassette that costs an exhorbitantly high $8-10. As it is, I buy no CDs. I'd buy a track online in mp3 format for about $0.25. I'd buy just about everything I want if they were about $0.05. Again, I think this is a fair price for something that costs very little to distribute. I won't pay $1.00 for a track that is in a propriatary, protected format, and I won't pay $0.25 or even $0.05 for a song I can only listen to once or twice.
I'm extremely distressed at the back catalogs I can't buy -- even if I want to, and the music they won't sell me at any price, and don't want me to get, like b-sides on CD Singles released only in Germany. I'm even more distressed by the insane profits the music industry makes, and the way they keep trying to squeeze yet more profit out of the consumers.
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Informative)
The downloaders may not be giving compensation that they might otherwise have given. But they aren't taking anything from the artists. And even if they are freeloaders, they aren't taking anything from anyone else either. The RIAA is taking money from consumers, and they don't even have the decency to give decent compensation to the people who make it possible.
Re:Really good point (Score:3, Insightful)
Thanks for destroying the appeal of capitalism. (Score:5, Funny)
Great. Now I'll never look at a big wad of bills the same way again.
a what? (Score:5, Funny)
Rolling around with Bill, or bills, all the same (Score:2)
Bill's strategy to remove his anti-trust albatross seems to be dragging it on and on until everyone's thoroughly sick of it, then rushing through a quick settlement - to almost everyone's relief - then trading heavily on that relief.
Hillary's strategy with her greed albatross seems to be waving it in people's faces. Ugh.
Re:Rolling around with Bill, or bills, all the sam (Score:4, Funny)
The sick thing is that after only four replies, I'll bet the metamoderators can no longer tell which "Bill and Hilary" we were talking about.
Re:Rolling around with Bill, or bills, all the sam (Score:4, Funny)
>Hillary's strategy...
Are you sure we're talking about the right Bill and Hillary in the context of a 'wad'?
Re:Rolling around with Bill, or bills, all the sam (Score:5, Funny)
Are you sure we're talking about the right Bill and Hillary in the context of a 'wad'?
I don't think Bill will be shooting a wad at Hillary anytime soon.
-20 Sick & twisted
Re:Thanks for destroying the appeal of capitalism. (Score:3, Interesting)
I know where my next stop would be... (Score:4, Funny)
But as long as you're looking for whom piracy really hurts, ask the guitarist
in the coffee shop, or the group scratching out a living touring in a beat-up van.
I didnt know she had that much compassion towards us poor touring artists. Now I know where I am gonna take my deadbeat van and my pothead groupies next . Right to her doorstep! Maybe she would tip us better..
Jackster and the Beanstalk (Score:5, Insightful)
in the coffee shop, or the group scratching out a living touring in a beat-up van.
Oh bullshit.
It's precisley these people that the wantonly open trading of music helps most.
I saw an interview with the Offspring a little bit ago. They were asked the question 'How can my garage band make it big'.
They gave several suggestions, but the one they harped on most was giving away the music to anyone who would listen to it, be it kids, dj's, or record executives. I think they were talking about free tapes and CD's, but it amounts to the same thing.
Look at Rammstein (sp?) with their hit 'Du Hast'. Rammstein would never have been as big in NA with a German-titled song without the power of MP3 piracy. Nobody knew who they were in the U.S. before their tracks started showing up on Scour, Napster, and Usenet.
Hillary Rosen is a lying bitch. She's not worried one little bit about money, for herself or for the artists. She's worried about the music industry losing control of their golden goose, which has already happened to a great degree.
Jack Jackster into the castle, has the singing harp and the golden goose, and now the evil giant Hillary has to keep him from getting out alive. Here's hoping she falls off the beanstalk and makes a big hole in the ground when she lands.
Re:Jackster and the Beanstalk (Score:2, Insightful)
Of course, that doesn't prove the "would never have been as big in NA" but I seriously doubt the didn't have significant exposure before then. I had certainly heard of them long before Napster (can't say about Usenet, never tried to get mp3s from there).
Sure, giving away music is a great strategy for a new band to gain exposure. However, that's "giving away" music, not "let's get pirated."
Re:I know where my next stop would be... (Score:2)
Hmm. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, the RIAA is the primary obstacle to both of these goals.
Access to music (Score:2)
Of course, the problem with Napster was that the stuff got too freely distributed, cutting out the whole "pay the artist for thier work" step.
Re:Access to music (Score:5, Insightful)
REAL ARTISTS HAVE DAY JOBS
Re:Access to music (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hmm. . . (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA, as we have seen is just the body which fights progress and consumers at the behest of the recording companies.
Quote (Score:2, Funny)
No, it's also about stealing warez and getting pr0n! :)
If they'd produce good content... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:If they'd produce good content... (Score:2)
Are they good music?
Yes?
So what are you talking about?
Re:If they'd produce good content... (Score:2)
Choke on the irony here... (Score:2, Insightful)
She's babbling on about the evils of peer-to-peer and how "the public sees it" as an infestation of theives and porn and big evil computer viruses.
Why didn't she come right out and say that the WTC attacks were planned over a p2p network?
It's frustrating to see how the RIAA is taking advantage of the fact that it's not quite as commonplace as the phone to drum up anti-sentiment. This wouldn't be working if it was "hey, snail mail is peer-to-peer, they can steal our stuff!"
Intellectual Property as America's Core Export (Score:3, Insightful)
You make a good point regarding the differences in businesses, whether they play by the rules (major labels), or break them (Napster). Napster-like trading services have changed the way your business competes, and it is an unfortunate truth that your business will have to change in order to deal with that. I don't see how asking consumers to 'step up to the plate', or to 'cough up some money on that plate' are going to help your business be competitive.
Best Regards,
R. Hogaboom
They wont be satisfied ... (Score:4, Funny)
She's lying through her teeth (Score:3, Funny)
*cough* Britney Spear *COUGH COUGH* Backstreet Boy *COUGH RRRRAHHH* Spice Girls ...
Actually, she's right, the works of "artists" is valuable ... to the RIAA : how else would they milk so much money from today's masses of artistically-challenged teenagers ?
So what are you saying? (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, let's have a couple of very basic lessons which most of the "Of COURSE I should be given it for free, DUH!" bozos around here seem to need.
1: Does recording a new Britney Spears (or another artist you may actually like) album cost money? You betcha. Recording time, session musicians, studio staff, blah blah blah, not to mention all the promotion for the album, design costs, etc. It all adds up to thousands or even hundreds of thousands in many cases.
2: Is a new Britney Spears album in demand? Maybe not for you, but several million teenagers think you're wrong, and who are you to say you've got better taste than them? First lesson of economics: demand = value. Amazing how many people forget this.
3: The way you talk, you'd think that all commercial music was Britney and Spice Girls. Oh, right, I'm sorry, I forgot that there are no commercially-produced CDs in your collection. Well, if I'm wrong, surely those CDs have some value? Right? Or are you going to say that the tons of good work that gets produced by thousands of recording artists every year is worth nothing?
As much as I hate what the RIAA is doing, arguments like yours make me want to side with them. I care about music because it makes my life better. If music has no value to you, I don't know why you even care whether you can download it for free or not.
-- Yoz
Re:So what are you saying? (Score:2)
Baking mud pies costs money. That does not mean they are worth anything.
2: Is a new Britney Spears album in demand? Maybe not for you, but several million teenagers think you're wrong, and who are you to say you've got better taste than them?
Well, they themselves probably will say that, as soon as they get a few years older.
3: The way you talk, you'd think that all commercial music was Britney and Spice Girls.
You haven't watched MTV in the last few years, have you?
Re:So what are you saying? (Score:2)
Depends entirely on their demand and supply, doesn't it?
You haven't watched MTV in the last few years, have you?
There's a small amount of music on MTV that I like. There's probably a small amount that you like too, however unwilling you are to admit it.
Is my favourite music played on MTV? No. Did it cost me money to buy the CDs? Yes. Were these CDs produced commercially? Yes. Is there more to commercial music than MTV? Yes.
Totally missed the point (Score:2)
It doesn't seem that you got what he was saying. He was attempting to address the notion of "value" as being something that does not necessarily include monetary worth. If you define value to be only about how much it will bring in the market, then everything you have said is correct. If, however, you include actual quality in your definition of value, then the original poster has a point, however poorly he may have expressed it.
Re:She's lying through her teeth (Score:2, Interesting)
It's even possible that if modern cultures didn't place such a heavy emphasis on acquiring money, art might possibly be able to come more readily to the forefront, instead of having to squeeze in between the profit margins. NOT that I'm saying that Capitalism is a bad idea... *cough*
Infringement NOT Piracy (Score:5, Interesting)
I know there are some artists trying to buck RIAA stranglehold but I'm waiting for the day when big artists (remember The Offspring's attempt to make _Conspiracy of One_ available for download?) get out from under the big studios and the RIAA.
Glad to see... (Score:5, Funny)
Glad to see that story submissions are always un-biased on
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
We're obviously biased towards Linux, and against the RIAA.
We value certain things, and think certain ways, and have never set up illusion otherwise.
It's called a community.
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, and did you see how the Microsoft icon is Bill Gates looking like the Borg? I think that there may be a little anti-MS bias here, too.
Re:Glad to see... (Score:5, Insightful)
What she's saying is (Score:2, Insightful)
Not the way to make friends with developers.
Love of Money (Score:2)
[insert satire]
Actually, it has to do with her desire to do nasty things with money.
[end]
Also at the very end she uses all of the open source buzzwords to make it sound like she is on the side of open source, etc. The BS detector blew a fuse on that one.
Think About This (Score:4, Funny)
Two wrongs dont make a right. If you do not like how the Record company handles things, boycotting them is fine but STEALING their copyrights through P2P networks is not justified. Buy from indy labels, dont buy from the big boys. However, you still do not have the right to take their copyrights.
Also, the RIAA is not anti-P2P networks. The question isnt whether peer to peer technology is good or bad. The question is whether these networks will be used with repect to what artists create just like the recording industry respects what business sponsors and sofware developers make. If the RIAA released a program to help warez software, you wouldnt like the RIAA either, would you. The RIAA is not anti-software developers, theyjust want to protect their monopoly.
Re:Think About This (Score:3, Interesting)
Two wrongs dont make a right.
Neither does simply allowing the original wrong to stand. I love how the crooks of the world always hold this up as a defense when the hammer is finally about to fall.
Actually, even though it probably won't help a bit, what we should also be doing is protesting to the government to change the damn laws that were obviously paid for by the entertainment industry. Extending copyright until it lasts longer than an average human lifetime just defeats the purpose of the "limited times" clause on copyright. What good is it if Disney and the others can just buy an extension every time their copyrights are about to expire?
Re:Think About This (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps capitalizing does something to the definition of a word that I'm not aware of, but I'll assume for the purposes of this discussion that such a mutation is not built into the English language. Now, no one has ever stolen a copyright over a P2P network. It's impossible. Why? Two reasons:
1. when I download something via a P2P network, the person whose machine I copied it from still has it. That pretty much makes it impossible to steal anything.
2. I download mp3's, not copyrights. What P2P network are you on?
What-- you think I'm being flippant, or dodging the issue? I'm not, but the RIAA is (as are you). This is not an issue of stealing. No one's stealing anything over P2P networks. You still have it when I download it. Why do they talk about stealing instead of copyright infringement? Because stealing makes it sound like you're taking money away from some poor artist; copyright infringement makes it sound like you're cutting into the recording industry's profits. If they got too in-depth and started talking about real issues, everyone would realize in a second what disgusting slime these people are. As long as they can bog people down in the typical platitudes of "two wrongs don't make a right" and "stealing is wrong", they never have to worry about real scrutiny. Don't be fooled.
She has guts (Score:2)
She does not have the right to strip us of our rights.
Re:She has guts (Score:2)
The artists' job? (Score:2)
This is an interesting perspective. Although I haven't known many artists (or writers), the few that I have known would not consider making music a "job", just like many /. readers don't consider working with tech a "job".
Good music comes mostly from passion and dedication to the craft. And I suspect nearly all musicians are attracted to the idea of an instant worldwide audience via swapping of their art. If Michelangelo were alive today, wouldn't he want there to be photography allowed in the Sistine Chapel?
You're with the RIAA or you're with the terrorists (Score:2, Interesting)
There they go jumping on the terrorism bandwagon again [slashdot.org]. Can any one even make sense of what she's talking about here? Bin Laden is going to order Afghanis to clog up all the world's bandwidth by downloading the new Britney Spears album on Gnutella all at the same time?
Show them how you really feel! (Score:2)
What's wrong with making money (Score:2)
Re:What's wrong with making money (Score:2)
Hillary Rosen vs Courtney Love (Score:5, Informative)
Today I want to talk about piracy and music. What is piracy? Piracy is the act of stealing an artist's work without any intention of paying for it. I'm not talking about Napster-type software. I'm talking about major label recording contracts.
The full text of Love's speech can be found here [salon.com].
It is an interesting read, particularly if you contrast it with Rosen's (ahem) desire to protect the artists and ensure that the artists are fairly compensated...
I wonder if Hillary was able to keep a straigh face during her speech!
Re:Hillary Rosen vs Courtney Love (Score:2, Interesting)
Nice try.. (Score:4, Informative)
For those that chose not to read the speech in its entirety:
"I will be the first in line to file a class action suit to protect my copyrights if Napster or even the far more advanced Gnutella doesn't work with us to protect us. I'm on [Metallica drummer] Lars Ulrich's side, in other words, and I feel really badly for him that he doesn't know how to condense his case down to a sound-bite that sounds more reasonable than the one I saw today."
A wise man once said, "From what I can surmise, the speech dealt both with her love of money and her desire to roll around naked in a pile of money."
Not that there's anything wrong with wanting to get paid, but let's be clear about where Ms. Love stands.
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
She does have some legitimate points. Personally, as a musician, and one who plans to make music a career, I want to be able to have the same opportunity to make money as anyone else. I don't want to be rich, I just want to be able to live comfortably.
However, the foundation of her argument is flawed. Artists get a ridiculously small percentage of CD sales, and this isn't changing even as CD prices close on the twenty dollar mark.
Artists get most of their money from concerts. Albums are basically just advertising. File-sharing programs are more effective advertising (People like free things). If more people are listening to their music because the price barrier isn't there, then more people will go to their concerts, putting more money in the artists' pockets. This is a good thing.
The only artists who are speaking out against file sharing programs are artists that A) don't need any more money, and B) don't understand that this actually helps less mainstream artists.
Basically, what it comes down to for me is this: If I'm dinking around on Limewire, Napster, Morpheus, or any other music-swapping program and I come an mp3 of one of my songs, I'm not disappointed. I'm not feeling the money fly out of my wallet. I'm elated. I'm absolutely ecstatic that someone would take the time to download my music and keep it on their hard drive. They've done this because they like it, not because of money or any other impetus. That's half the reason that I want to be a musician (Incidentally, the other half is that I hate/suck at everything else): to create something that people like - that touches people. It's a wonderful thing when this can occur outside of a corporate environment, outside of the store. If my music was flying all over the 'net and I was living in the street, that would be a different matter, but that's just not how it works.
Anyway, that's just what I think...
(Does anyone else find the Gates-esque overuse of the word innovation and derivations thereof rather disturbing?)
Re:Well... (Score:2)
Re:Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
I always took that quote as them providing a reason why you should go see their concert ie. new music will be performed and not the same old stuff you've seen them do before. The promotion of the album is for the recoding company's benefit and as a way to try to get increased visibility. Before they got recoding contracts, bands most likely made money by their performances and any merchandise they had available for sale. That's one of the reasons why they got a recording contract in the first place. Selling more albums helps them get more airplay and other promotional help from the label which then helps them draw bigger crowds. Whether they make money on it is dependent on the deals they've made with the promoters, how extravagant they want to be, and/or how much they have to pay the label for recording costs.
Just goes to show (Score:2)
Tim O'Reilly comes through again (Score:2)
Oh. He was. I think I see a pattern here and it sucks.
Re:Tim O'Reilly comes through again (Score:4, Insightful)
Did anyone notice... (Score:2, Funny)
This comment...
I want to get the lawyers out and the innovators in.
I think that this was slightly edited... I'm sure that the original read...
I want to get the lawyers out, and the innovators in jail.
Clearly she means "Get the lawyers out" in the same sense that a gunfighter would say "get the guns out."
Z.
Its a shame they dont understand simple math (Score:2)
the more product you make the less the product cost to produce, if one person will by a product at 20.00, four will buy it at 15.00 and 20 will buy it at 10.00
not factoring in production cost reduction if the product costs 2.50 to produce, then the sale of the one at 20.00 will net them 17.50, the 4 at 15.00 will net 50.00 and the 20 at 10.00 will net 150.00...
so the lesson is lower the price, and MORE people will buy... and you will get more money to pay the artists... oh wait thats not what this is all about is it...
this just in, Michael Jackson Debuts at No. 1 (Score:2)
Re:this just in, Michael Jackson Debuts at No. 1 (Score:3, Funny)
Here We Go (Score:2, Insightful)
> with her love of money and her desire to roll
> around naked in a pile of money.
From what I can surmise, the replies will all consist of Slashdot users' love of free music, wrapped by claims of freedom and fair use.
Re:Here We Go (Score:2)
Any remotely unbiased opinions anywhere? (Score:4, Interesting)
I think it is obvious that Rosen would have a bias for the RIAA's stance. Slashdotters have a strong bias against the RIAA's stance.
Is there any sort of remotely middle ground reporting anywhere?
Basically Slashdot discussing the RIAA or the RIAA discussing Slashdot is going to have a lot of blood involved, each side is going talk from such an incredibly biased viewpoint that there is an increasingly diminishing chance to pick out the truth among the propaganda. It is much like political parties talking about each other. They might all agree on a private level about something but simply disagree because they hate each other.
To me, it is obvious to me that a person commenting a Rosen speach as being about "rolling around in cash naked" has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Before I subscribe... (Score:4, Interesting)
Geez, what an insightful, informative writeup.
Taco, I've been reading since the site was run off the server you were adminning at work, and had expectations consistent with your scale of operations. But if you're implementing paid subscriptions, you might also want to apply some of the standards normally expected of professional journalism. In this case, that would involve a writeup that doesn't rate a -1 Flamebait and filing the story under Music, which I have blocked because I simply can't stop myself by flaming every one of these hypocritical file sharing stories, rather than The Almighty Buck.
(Yes, I understand the difference between the submitter's text and the editor's additions. An editor's job involves -- get this! -- editing!)
Ah, the sweet cloying smell of hypocrisy! (Score:5, Informative)
Hillary Rosen says,
Note that she doesn't claim that they in the recording business respect artists or their work themselves. Courtney Love's rant [salon.com] on the piracy of the recording industry makes for educational reading. Later Rosen says, And of course they are. Look at the profits of the major labels. The problem being of course, is that this is monetary value, and further, they are much more valuable to the labels than the artists once the rights have been signed away.The language in the speech is emotive, as is to be expected. But the kiddie porn quote is surely beyond the pale,
And the very companies that the RIAA represent publish and promote music with hate-lyrics.We also have the old chestnut of referring to illegal copying as theft. Repeatedly. This should be plain enough, but many people seem to have bought the lie. Illegal copying is just that. It may well be damaging to the creators of the material (which is probably wrong) as well as to the distributors (which is not necessarily wrong - people don't have a right to make a profit, remember!). What it is not though, is theft. Let alone piracy. The debate on intellectual property is muddied enough as it is, without resorting to misleading language.
I think the most poignant quote though is,
This is so true. Sadly, it's the piracy of the recording industry - which has, among other things, managed to have artists' work reclassified as work for hire (!) - that is responsible for artists living in poverty while simultaneously having millions of CD sales. The term piracy is much more applicable to this sort of action; what these labels do is not illegal copying, but the wholesale transfer of rights from the artist to themselves using the big stick of exclusive access to mainstream distribution channels.If you have an interest in the music industry and not yet read the Salon article linked above, you really ought. It's very educational.
PS: If you do want to support artists, there is always Fairtunes [fairtunes.com].
Non-touring older musicians: cry me a river (Score:5, Insightful)
Why should artists (and the corporate scum who exploit them) be the only people who continue to get paid for years and years, for work they did once? If I stopped producing new intellectual creative works (of engineering) today, my gravy train would be cut off tomorrow. No residuals, no speaking engagements, no MTV retrospectives. Why the hell should artists be different?
Re:Non-touring older musicians: cry me a river (Score:3, Interesting)
You should also include inventors in your category of people who get paid over a long period of time.
You signed up for your 'gravy train' when you signed your employment contract. If you want a percentage of the profits from your work, renegotiate your contract. I wouldn't, if I were you. Works of engineering tend to become obsolete quickly, but art does not.
Imagine... (Score:2, Insightful)
Personally, I think this type of sytem would really blow.
Entertainment Industry (Score:5, Interesting)
In the music industry, Artists get paid sweet FA, they obviously don't have a union, and they don't go on strike to get a better deal when they are being done over.
Ao what Artists need to do is form a union, and unite against their employers, the recording industry. If they don't do this, then they don't deserve any more money.
The fact is, P2P music copying:
1) Gets music spread around more - increasing the chance of it being purchased legitimately
2) Doesn't mean that without the P2P the music would have been bought
3) or that a sale was lost as a result of the P2P download
4) Sure, some people will download music and not buy CDs as a result. These people are a significant minority who previously recorded their friends' CDs onto tape anyway
The fact is, the RIAA exist for the artists for several reasons - to provide recording facilities, and to advertise the artist. P2P does the advertising, and thus takes away one of the reasons for artists to use a major record label. The other one is less necessary as computer technology improves to the state where a personal music studio is a few thousand dollars, and can match a professional music studio from a few years ago for features.
The RIAA really need DVD Audio, with videos to differentiate their products from P2P. P2P is a competitor, and they want this competition legislated out of existence. For example, the Static X song, Black and White (kicks ass) is available on DVD with the (kick ass) video, and other videos of the band. This is worth buying as a reasonable price.
What kind of reception did she get? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe it really wouldn't make a difference -- but I don't really think that these high-profile executives are really all that hard-skinned. They revel in the attention. Confronting such a public figure with your distaste for them is an important political statement. And they don't deserve to feel good about themselves.
And there's something comforting -- as in a passion play -- when a group of people can agree and express their common opinion of who is good and who is bad.
before copyrights... (Score:5, Funny)
Keep debating ethics... (Score:4, Interesting)
So instead of whining about it, the RIAA should play by the rules of capitalism and figure out a way to capitalize on it. The P2P networks are not defeatable in a meaningful way. They will always be ahead of the RIAA, which will hire squadrons of monkeys to track everybody's IP addresses and file complaints with ISPs until stealth P2P comes around, etc.etc.etc.
This is just stupid. Napster did the RIAA a HUGE service. They showed them where the market is. So open a god-damned for-subscription service where I can share music in the same way I did with Napster. I'd be willing to pay a subscription fee, say 10 dollars a month, plus say 25 to 50 cents per song I download in order to reward artists for making music I like. That's what it's worth to me, and I think a lot of others who like downloading and controlling the music they listen to would feel the same way. It's really no different from radio, except the money is coming from me instead of from advertisers and I have control rather than the station managers.
If you don't like this business model, come up with another one that's palatable. But don't try to sue us back to the Stone Age or to put the genie back in the bottle. He won't go back in. The internet isn't going away. Deal with it. Furthermore, though two wrongs don't make a right, the reality is that the second wrong here is not screwing anybody out of any money. CD sales have generally been up, and people will still buy CDs especially of lesser known artists to support them.
I'm sorry, but while in the abstract it may not be "right" for me to download lots of MP3s, it's not "right" for me to pay 15 dollars for a CD with one song I might or might not want, and it's not "right" that 30-40 cents of every CD goes to the artists who make the music, and as I said above, this is a capitalist world and a capitalist society, and if you aren't selling something, somebody else will come up with a way to provide it, and if they can provide it for free, people will take it. And if you try to use the legal system to suppress that, the technology will improve until it's unregulatable - these aren't physical goods, and they can't be thought of as such.
What is her POINT?! (Score:3, Interesting)
She also says that the people writing such things as Gnutella don't understand that they have the choice to make money or not on software, but music is just "stolen" (infringed to the rest of us). Of course this ignores the decades of warez precident and the BCA's role. This is a totally hollow argument. We write software. We sell it. We get paid. Some poeple will never be willing to pay. We know. None of that means a damn when Microsoft starts alienating their own customers with tactics like the licensing of XP. Even good, faithful customers look for an out in another product. The RIAA has the same problem.
She comments that she's excited about the possibilities of P2P. Heh, even in the client-server model of digital music, the RIAA freaked out when artists started putting their own music up for download (members did, that is).
Bottom line: read my lips, music sharing will happen. Movie sharing will happen. People will continue to share what they believe (rightly or wrongly) to be theirs. What the RIAA should be doing is coming up with a better way to take advantage of that momentum. Create a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. The corollary to that is that if you just stand around yelling at the manufacturers of poor mousetraps, you eventually get ignored.
Re:*vomit* (Score:2)
Re:please add a grain of salt (Score:2)
Re:Interesting story about Ms.Rosen (Score:2)