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Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu Jan 03, 2008 11:02 AM
from the rats-heading-down-the-hawsers dept.
from the rats-heading-down-the-hawsers dept.
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.'"
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News: RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized 668 comments
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"
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The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Interesting)
They may get to the point where lawsuits are the only real income they have left. When that day comes, and all their Congressional bribe money has dried up, I think we'll see the courts and politicians finally start to hit back hard and finish them off. And they'll die still clutching their outmoded CD's, like pathetic John Henry's fighting innovation to the bitter end.
Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Insightful)
While I agree with the sentiment, are artists really leaving in "droves?" Other than indie artists maybe never pursuing a label to start with, how many already-signed artists are leaving the labels? Can you list more than 10? More than 20? Even if you listed 1000, I'm sure it would be something like a tiny single digit percentage (or less) of the total artists on labels, hardly qualifying as droves.
I think it *will* happen, and hopefully at an exponentially increasing rate. But for now, they still have the stranglehold on the artists.
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Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
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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].
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Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Interesting)
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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.
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Re:The vicious last bites of a wounded animal (Score:5, Insightful)
The parallels with SCO are amazing, especially given the sizes of the companies we are talking about. That they could fail to see the future coming at them and more importantly read the trends (i.e. Napster) and react to them in a positive, money-making fashion, is an indictment of the corporate system, where over-priced CEOs sit in their glass-lined offices looking like suit-wearing fish and providing just about as much value to their company. When you start treating your customers as criminals, you have slipped over the edge and down the slippery slope toward oblivion.
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Not like John Henry (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Not like John Henry (Score:5, Insightful)
If America were full of John Henry's, we'd have become a third-world backwater a long time ago.
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Sounds familiar (Score:4, Interesting)
Now where have I heard that before... Oh, that's right. SCO. And look where they're at...
Re:Sounds familiar (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah, but they didn't have much to market and a very small group that they could actually market their products (invented or real) to. SCO had to invent the "Pay us for Linux or we'll sue later" shit in order to have something that some companies would actually be willing to pay them for.
Those involved with the RIAA still have a product that is mass marketable and that plenty of people will continue to purchase. Just because the Slashbotters (me included on this one) refuse to support RIAA music doesn't mean that anyone else really gives a shit. Yes, artists are starting to come around and going around the RIAA by distributing their music online, and it's working, but it's still not to the point where it's a 100% viable method to get your music out.
It will be at least 5 years and more like 15 to 20 before we really see the fuckers die off -- as unfortunate as that is.
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Trade Associations Gone Wild! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Trade Associations Gone Wild! (Score:5, Interesting)
The inference people here seem to be drawing (that the labels are in trouble because of the lawsuits) resonates well -- we want to believe that kind of justice works in the market -- but really it has the cause and effect reversed. Sales dropped first, then the law suits started.
Now, the thesis is correct in so far as "sue the customer" is not a productive response to an adverse market. They continue to spiral not because they file the lawsuits, but because meanwhile they do nothing to address the orignal failure of their position in the market.
The "ripping mp3s is unauthorized" angle is FUD all around, though. FUD on the RIAA for using that wording in the first place (yes it's unauthorized, in the same sense that I'm not authorizing you to disagree with my post), and FUD on everyone who cites this as the moment where the RIAA calls all users thieves.
Now, sure, the bad press from the lawsuits doesn't help the RIAA... among the small part of the market that sees what's going on and cares. Don't get me wrong, I'm among that small part of the market (not anti-copyright, not convinced that everything the RIAA says is wrong, but on the whole opposed to their actions over the past few years); but don't be fooled into thinking that slashdot is the world.
As to the investment point of view... yeah, to a point, I wouldn't want to be putting money behind the major labels right now. But Sony? What would be the total impact on Sony if their record label arm spun off or died out completely?
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Shared Folder? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probably the best thing to happen to them (Score:4, Insightful)
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.]
Stock shares? (Score:5, Insightful)
Many companies have been proclaimed dead or dying while their shares kept going up, and they keep going up still. Some portals were proclaimed to be dead because their percentage market share vaned comparing to Google, but they actually gain users as the net grows, and they actually grow and note profits each year.
So how's it for the record industry?
The **AA can't afford any more attention like this (Score:5, Interesting)
My in-laws really don't care about the **AA and their ways, CDs and DVDs are JUST TOO EXPENSIVE. Never mind the lawsuits, their crap products are priced way out of order.
Time to start ePhoenix records I think....
Re:so, what would Fool say about our Friend (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft, the last I heard, pays no dividends.
So I think MS is probably a "stock for fools". If you buy a stock with the expectation of its price rising, you're gambling, not investing. That's not to say that gambling that Mars won't explode in the next two weeks isn't a good bet; some gambles are worthwhile.
As to the record companies, DUH! You don't need an expert to tell you that a company whose sales have been falling for over five years is a turkey.
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Re:so, what would Fool say about our Friend (Score:5, Insightful)
RIAA: track record of suing their own customers, based on "evidence" gathered via pretty shady means
MS: doesn't regularly sue their own customers (their competitors, sure, but not random joe off the street)
Failure of vista: Not the only money maker that MS has. Also not their only market.
Failure of music sales: only thing the riaa has.
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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.
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Look to wedding photography (Score:4, Interesting)
I suspect musicians will go the same route. Songs will be given away as free advertising, and they'll make their money by booking performances and concerts (and selling memorabilia at such). For all practical purposes that's the way most of the RIAA-contracted musicians work anyway right now, since the studios keep 95% to over 100% (the band owes them money) of all the proceeds from song sales.
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