Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies 301
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Motley Fool investment Web site warns investors to beware of 'Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, Vivendi Universal, and EMI.' In an article entitled 'We're All Thieves to the RIAA,' a Motley Fool columnist, referring to the RIAA's pronouncement in early December in Atlantic v. Howell, that the copies which Mr. Howell had ripped from his CDs to MP3s in a shared files folder on his computer were 'unauthorized,' writer Alyce Lomax said 'a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.'"
Re:so, what would Fool say about our Friend (Score:3, Informative)
Talking out both sides (Score:5, Informative)
I suppose they want it both ways - keep people on the edge and they're easier to control or something.
Magnatune.com (Score:5, Informative)
[Caveat: I don't work for them, own any part of the company, or know anyone personally who's released a CD through them. I just buy their stuff and dig Shannon Coulter's sultry voice.]
The former are desperate, the later aren't (Score:5, Informative)
**AA are suing who ever they can going through complicated legal justification trying to explain why "Fair Use" never applies, trying to persuade that "Format shifting" represents "Unlawful evil piracy", etc. They're basically trying to find ways to stop everything that normally should be allowed by the law (and somewhat managed to partly achieve this goal with DMCA).
On the other hand the situation with GPL is much simplier.
The copyright law is simple : Thou shall not copy. (outside the list of exception, like personnal backups, etc. against which the **AA are fighting).
The GPL is a license : it gives additional rights, more specifically it gives you the right to freely distribute copies of GPL software, as long as you pass along the accompanying freedom to the next in the chain.
If you don't follow the license, you lose those additional rights and everything reverts to the official copyright law. Which says No-No to distributing software which you don't own personally.
They're basically making sure that the users retains their freedom by using pre-existing legal infrastructure.
You'll notice that :
- GPL isn't threatening to sue users at all. The whole "FreeSoftware" concept is about giving freedoms to users. They threaten to sue companies that would be taking away those freedoms. And in fact they don't threaten as often, as they help misguided companies who don't really understand the GPL. There are only a couple of suit-threats that we've heard here on
The end users benefits of the GPL, whereas with the former the end user is the target.
- There are no auto-settlement-bot spilling standart cease-and-desist suit-threat
- GPL isn't trying to twist the interpretation of the law to try to remove rights that where granted in the first place (They're not arguing what is "Fair Use" and trying to limit it). The GPL is based on pre-existing laws.
Its not just the lawsuits... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:4, Informative)
RIAA-safe albums as found on riaaradar.com (the top100) include some well known names though. Some artists that have actually dumped the RIAA include Madonna, Nine Inch Nails, Oasis, Jamiroquai, Radiohead, Courtney Love and Canadian labels Anthem, Acquarius, The Children's Group, Linus Entertainment, Nettwerk and True North Records and there has been some commotion between EMI and the RIAA too so they might pull out completely pretty soon too.
Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Informative)
Also...
Madonna signed with LiveNation concert promotion group (I don't know if they are embedded or not).
Harvey Danger (90's one hit wonder) released a free CD
Barenaked Ladies have interesting views on releasing music (I can't remember the details, but they distribute through a non-traditional site)
Beastie Boys have put out at like one Creative Commons song and I think their latest album was somehow independent
But my favorite is any musician with decent music posted on Jamendo [jamendo.com], where provides BitTorrent downloadable Ogg-Vorbis albums under Copyleft licenses. The site is a virtual treasure trove of exciting artists waiting to be discovered.
Re:Incorrect (Score:3, Informative)
This is a pretty unequivocal statement. If you make your personal copies available for distribution, they are no longer your personal copies since distribution is not the purpose, right, or intention for maintaining personal copies
No it isn't. Just becasue a folder is defined as shared does not mean you can or want to distribute music from it. The problem is that they don't define what a shared folder is. I have folders on my machine that are shared within my home network but not to the internet. So does this mean I can't place music in them? There is a BIG difference between locally shared folders and ones that are made available to the internet.
Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Informative)
Also included is david lowry's retelling of how they got dropped, it ain't gonna suck itself [youtube.com].
Re:Mod Parent Up... (Score:3, Informative)
This sort of mindless rant doesn't help anyone. You do realise that taxes are a percentage of the cost of cigarettes??