RIAA Sends Letter to Senate Supporting INDUCE Act 511
The Importance of writes "Slashdot has discussed the INDUCE Act before (and here and here). The act would make 'intentionally inducing' infringement a crime, but defines inducing so broadly that all sorts of technology is threatened. A little over a week ago, tech companies and civil rights groups sent a letter to some senators asking for hearings on the bill. A couple of days ago, the RIAA responded with their own letter sent to all 100 senators. There is also an abridged and annotated version of the RIAA letter. LawMeme has put together an index to INDUCE Act analysis."
Re:A rearguard strategy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Imagine that.
best solution: carrot & stick (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:A rearguard strategy. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Freedom of music and my responses to their lett (Score:5, Interesting)
Err, did I just miss something? This is all their own fault, or concentrating entirely on the teen market and dropping any acts that don't sell at least 1.5 million with their debut. Them not nurturing talent is hardly filesharer's fault.
Their whole bloody argument is that filesharers aren't buying lots of albums (debatable, I know). So what does that have to do with the idea that bands not selling lots of albums aren't around any more?
battling for survival (and huge profits) (Score:4, Interesting)
The amount of bull they FUD is unbelievable. First off all, I have difficulties with their acclaimed 'stealing' of music/movies/etc.. As far as I know, stealing implies that the one that has been stolen has been derived of something. When you take a copy, you do not take the original away, thus they have not 'lost' anything. They might claim that they loose money when ppl d/l music, but even that is far from certain. Not only is it not shown statistically to have had that effect (they didn't even show a correlation thusfar - see aussie music-news - let alone a causality). Furthermore, in an individual case, they would have to show they actually lost revenue. Which is far from said, because I sure know some guys who d/l music or movies, but would NEVER have bought that music if they were unable to d/l it. So, how did the RIAA/IFPI/MPAA loose revenue, exactly? And if they didn't lose anything, how can the term 'stealing' apply?
It would still be copyright-infringement, ofcourse, but that's another matter. I think maybe it's time we went beyond our current system of copyrights and walk into the era of cyberspace. With the industrial revolution, patents and copyrights knew a high flight, maybe it's time to let it leave and try something new? Maybe something in the lines of this: fairshare (http://freenetproject.org/index.php?page=fairsha
And don't worry, contrary to what the RIAA claims, musicians will not starve to death, and music-making will not stop. We had music long before we had copyrights, and we will have music long after copyrights have vanished from the scene.
And lastly, it's something that *can not* be stopped. P2P progs and their development act as organisms that follow the darwinian rules of survival. When Napster was 'killed' by the RIAA, immediately others (like kazaa) took over, being more resistent to attacks from the RIAA&co. Whenever kazaa will be shut down, others again will take over. When endusers are targeted, systems that protect the user will become dominant (like FreeNet).
It really is a lost cause. But then again, they are not truelly battling for the survival of musicians (as I said; they will survive, just as they used to do), it's for their OWN survival they are fighting. There is no way in hell they are going to keep the giant profits that they have been gathering for the last decades.
But ultimately, they will have to do what P2P systems are already doing: adapt to the new circumstances (and forget about the former levels of profit), or whither and die. But ofcourse, for the time being they are going the other way (as others have done in the past); trying to manipulate the law to their needs, so that, basically, their way of doing business gets entrenched in law and protected by law, even if everyone else would be made a criminal by it.
If by "Nerd Utopia" you mean... (Score:3, Interesting)
But even if BB does manage to turn the world of entertainment into a fascist police state... it [audiolunchbox.com] won't [magnatune.com] last [fsf.org]. Therefore I've stopped fretting.
Re:Americans can send a message (Score:1, Interesting)
All the candidates support this stuff!
It's a sham democracy because you really don't have a choice. Both candidates are always the same. Sure maybe one is pro-gay and the other is anti-gay or one is pro-abortion and the other is anti-abortion but when it comes down to economic issues and supporting large corporations they are both the same.
Basically you are living in a dictatorship of capital.
The big corporations and the elites that run them can get any law passed they want and you are absolutely powerless to stop them.
Apple didn't sign on? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:A rearguard strategy. GARBAGE (Score:4, Interesting)
A beautiful myth -- and utter garbage. A few million file sharers -- a few billion inhabitants of this Earth. Yeah, that's going to happen. Would that there really was a song so popular that everybody actually wanted it.
You do now. (Score:3, Interesting)
Butcher Dave Stevens may mince meat, but not words.
"To us, an ounce is an ounce, and a pound is a pound," he affirms while slicing a skirt steak in The Chop Shop, Leigh-on-Sea, eastern England. "A kilogram is a foreign measure, and our customers don't understand what it means."
For Mr. Stevens and his business partner, Mandy Reilly, who describe themselves as "British to the core," threats of fines and the argument that the rest of Europe went metric long ago fall short. They are among thousands of British shopkeepers ready to take on Prime Minister Tony Blair's government - and the entire European Union - over the push to phase out Britain's old imperial measures. Says Ms. Reilly: "We aren't about to stop doing something we've been doing for centuries, just because Europe says so."
What the Federation of Small Businesses, representing 75,000 firms, has dubbed the "metric monster" began stalking Britain in 1971, when pounds, shillings, and pence were phased into a decimalized currency.
Pressure for a total conversion to metric has been building ever since. But there's a Churchill-like determination among old-standard stalwarts that echoes Sir Winston's 1940 speech, when he pledged that in the face of Hitler, Britain would "never surrender."
Holdouts found an ally in 1989; then-Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (no EU fan) won a 10-year reprieve, allowing British traders to sell loose goods exclusively in nonmetric quantities. But the Blair government, which favors closer EU integration, didn't seek an extension. So as of Jan. 1, the government warned traders they could be fined as much as 2,000 ($3,300) and have their weighing and measuring equipment confiscated if they didn't label everything in metric as well as nonmetric units. All but a few imperial measures are to be phased out over 10 years.
Britain has already found old habits die hard. Despite the switch to a decimal currency 29 years ago, the term guinea (meaning one pound and one shilling) is still used by some auction houses. And many British folk prefer to weigh themselves in "stones" (14 lbs.) rather than pounds or kilograms.
Americans have proved no keener on metrics. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act requires the simultaneous use of American and metric units. Last year, taking account of resistance by business and consumer interests, the Clinton administration persuaded the EU that all goods exported to the US continue to be sold in both units at least until 2009.
The new British rules apply not just to pounds and ounces, but to linear measures as well, raising problems for traders long used to yards, feet, and inches. Jose O'Ware has been selling window furnishings from her east London store, Fourth Avenue Blinds, for 30 years. "I have 4,000 readymade labels, and they're all in inches," says Mrs. O'Ware. "It would cost me thousands of pounds [dollars] to change them."
And there's another problem, which she shares with customers: "Ask me for something that is 59 inches wide, and I can see it in my mind. But ask for 1.3 meters, and I can't even begin to think what it would look like."
O'Ware vows she won't give an inch. "What are they going to do, confiscate my tape measure?"
But Britain's Consumer Affairs Minister Kim Howells has warned, "Anyone determined to be a metric martyr will have to pay the price."
Early in the New Year, a trading standards officer from a local council turned up at The Chop Shop and served an "infringement notice," giving its owners 28 days to convert their scales to metric.
O'Ware has had no such visits - yet. Interviewed on French television earlier this month, she declared she was prepared to go "to prison if I have to. If a British government is willing to prosecute an Englishwoman for trying to save part of our way of life, then so be it."
Re:A rearguard strategy. (Score:4, Interesting)
While catching tape traders is impossible, catching MP3 traders (or anyone else doing something "they" don't like online) is simply a matter of getting the right laws passed and throwing money at it until the entire net is covered with surveillance.
Eventually, they will block off all avenues of escape, and they will win, and the people -- and freedom -- will lose. Because right now you have no idea how many laws you're breaking that are currently unenforceable. Give the gov't/industry total control and total omniscience, and we'll be getting fines in the mail on a weekly basis.
Re:Americans can send a message (Score:1, Interesting)
Barbara Boxer? (Score:5, Interesting)
Guess who just got a letter telling her that she's lost *my* vote?
Anybody that sides with Hatch on issues like this loses my vote forever.
Re:Responses (Score:5, Interesting)
I was with you most of the way except for this. I think that touring is what MAKES an artist. The problem with today's cookie cutter, studio enhanced 'artists' is that they can't go out on the road and perform. Lip synching????? I know I'm getting older...but, this was unheard of back in my day. Sure the performance might sound a little stripped down since they couldn't do the multiply tracked guitars live...but, they still sounded great...they just made up for it with inventive playing...and best of all, showmanship.
Take a dinosaur group, Zeppelin. Those guys knew how to perform live. Sure, Page would flub notes here and there....but, just seeing someone LIVE trying to squeeze 12K of notes in a beat was amazing to watch and listen too. I'd much rather see a live band sweating and putting feeling into a song...playing it a little different every night, improvising on stage....that something so choreographed that if someone misses a mark...the whole show is out of whack.
I think many of the bands of old got their inspiration FROM touring and the road. Many albums were started and sometimes fully recorded on the road (the Stones Muscle Shoals sessions, Zeppelin doing most of II on the road while supporting the I album). Hell, Pink Floyd had most of Dark Side of the Moon layed out from playing it live before they even went into the studio for that session. So, no, I like the idea of a band being on the road and touring. Live performance, to me IS what makes a great band. Bands that actually can play their asses off....sing....and get an audience into it...that's what a rock band at least should be.
'Back in the day' while I was growing up, I pretty much saw it that the albums were there to generate interest to go see the band live when it came to your town!! Of course...tickets were over three figures back then...but, I digress. I think the artist should get a ton of the money from record sales...but, I also think the majority of their earnings should be from the road....playing live...and coming up with those new idea while playing for us, the audience.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Abuse it and Lose it I'm afraid (Score:1, Interesting)
I would accept your position if I could believe for even 5 seconds that it is only the welfare of the nation that the government has in mind, as opposed to their welfare as a government to stay in power.
Career politicians and bribery ^H^W lobbying are the big problems.
As a side note, I can't agree with your statement on social revolution either. Small labels/local music are thriving but the market mechanics are so drastically different. In a city of a million, getting half of one percent of people to buy your album is one thing. In a country of 300 million, getting half of one percent of people to buy your music is something else entirely. In the end, the RIAA makes more money and buys more influence because they sell coast-to-coast and have hands in both the promotion and distribution centers.
As far as music 'theft' goes, my mind goes back to Metallica. A band makes it big, partly because their fans love their music and spread bootlegs. In spite of the bootlegging, albums are sold, live concerts attended. Years later, the Internet becomes the de-facto means of swapping bootlegs (and released albums) and suddenly, the band doesn't want more exposure, they don't want new fans, they just want to sell albums. When a band doesn't think live shows are their bread and butter, you know something has gone wrong somewhere.
Re:Always a good time to mention the EFF (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm sory, the 'democratic' party is about as left wing as the USSR was communist.
Re:Freedom of music and my responses to their lett (Score:3, Interesting)
So, "inducing" people to commit copyright infringement (where "induce" is understood to be VERY broad) is somehow worse than inducing violence against the police, of which they are surely guilty when same incredibly broad reading of the word "induce?"
(Mind you, under the act, it would seem that you don't actually have to
Re:Abuse it and Lose it I'm afraid (Score:3, Interesting)
No, some people just think that in the future everything along those lines will be automated, therefore involve a much smaller portion of the population. As a result, most economic activity will be intellectual in nature. Therefore the continued existence of a capitalist economy requires intellectual property. It's pretty simple really.
Aren't high prices also an 'inducment'? (Score:1, Interesting)
Bring it on. Let's see if any of the defense lawyers can argue that if music were free, no one would steal it.
Not liberal? (Score:3, Interesting)
So, let's take a look at the socialist party platform and see what they advocate.
Regulation of business practices especially of stock markets. Both parties continue to increase the powers of departments that do that.
A graduated income tax. Social "insurance" for retirement and medicine.
Licensing of all professions by the state.
Oh, I could go on. These are all very "left" and all very "centrist" in the US.
Maybe you had some other policies in mind. Care to state what they are?
Bob-
The Future of American Society (Score:3, Interesting)
George Orwell described a bleak, decayed society in Nineteen Eighty-Four where science was banned and all technological progress was halted, unless it directly pertained to the military. I think what we see happening even now is corporations are working harder than ever see put an end to technological progress. Any progress in technology creates change. Any change is a threat to corporations. Any threat is a risk to them losing their immense wealth and power, and therefore, influence. Those at the top of this hierarchial society cannot retain their standing in the face of technological or any kind of intellectual advancement.
The only place all of this can possibly lead is to the society described by Orwel. The money and power are centralized to a very elite few while everyone else lives in a world where nothing is created to better their lives. Then the common people will no longer be a threat. This type of bullshit legislation will come again and again and again until what I have just described is achieved. The only alternative is for us, the "proles", to eliminate organizations like the RIAA.
Of course, this just something of a rant of my random thoughts on the matter. But I don't think I am the only one who sees where all of this could lead.