I'm still obsessive; this item is back. Napster the corporation has been destroyed, but the Napster paradigm continues. This is another quarterly installment in a series of weblog and discussion about the deconstruction of the music industry and other copyright industries, with side forays into "intellectual property, freedom of expression, electronic media, corporate control, and evolving technology," as polygon once phrased it. Several years of back items are easily found in the music2 and music3 conferences, covering discussions all the way back to the initial popularity of the MP3 format. Linked between the Agora and Music conferences.162 responses total.
We start off with a bang this quarter. On Thursday, the Recording Industry Association of America announced that it would start collecting evidence against Internet users whose file sharing software is offering copyrighted files online. The RIAA said it would file "hundreds" of lawsuits in 6-8 weeks. This news story is in most online media, so I won't bother with a link. (The new game is called the Lawsuit Lottery. Perhaps every month, several hundred of the estimated 50 million Americans using file sharing software will be picked to lose most everything they own.) In other legal proceedings, 24-year-old Kerry Gonzalez pled guilty to criminal copyright infringement for posting a working advance print of THE HULK to the net. A good story on his case is at: http://www.sunspot.net/business/bal-artslife-hulk0626,0,763448.story?coll=b al-business-headlines Mr. Gonzalez faces up to three years in prison and $250,000 in fines. The cited article does not say this, but this is likely one of the first convictions under the No Electronic Theft (NET) act; prior to that act, it was essentially impossible to get a criminal conviction for copyright infringement not done for financial gain. Vivaldi was especially steamed at Mr. Gonzalez for making the early work print of THE HULK available, because viewer reactions to that print generated a good deal of negative word-of-mouth on various internet forums.
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I don't. While this may be pertinent for currently active performers, I'm not sure how strong the argument applies to older music, especially stuff that's out of print. Most of my files are a handfull of years old; quite a few are about 10 years or so. How often are you going to be able to find Jazzy Redd's "I Am a Dope Fiend?" or B-sides from 'singles' compilations that I *know* the market usually pulls after a while? P2P sharing can operate a useful niche, I think; they just haven't regulated it right yet. Apple's iTunes and RealOne's Rhapsody are being put out for a reason-- and the latter has got to mean something, i.e. the concept is good enough for competition. I think the RIAA is fine is suing folks that run filesharing websites-- that's a rather grand scale. But attempting to sue every little file sharer, especially someone like me who usually picks songs that are old and not likely selling a lot, is completely ludicrous. If the music industry would grow up and start putting CD prices back where they should be, I think it might help. The other thing is that they seem to be milking their new talent too hard. It's been noted older acts are still solid moneymakers and I'm not completely sure the industry is taking time to let some of their newcomers continue to build a name for themselves. (I could be talking out my ass-- comments, please.)
Hadn't it been determined that the industry was colluding to inflate cd prices?
Vivaldi?
Ooops, my bad. Mr. Vivaldi hasn't sued anyone in a while, has he?
:)
When the economy sucks like it does now, people tend to buy bread not CDs. If the impact of file sharing over the Internet were in fact what caused the drop in music sales then I would expect we wouldn't see "blockbuster" movie releases either. It is just as easy to bootleg a movie as it is music. Thus before the music industry cries foul and blames its problems on Internet file sharing one would reasonably expect some proof. Apple's iTunes woulda flopped if the problem really is P2P networks would seem to me. It clearly is a marketing problem. The price of the CD of music is so high that the consumer is willing to spend time and trouble to find an alternative. One alternative a clever marketing organization might try is to reduce the individual cost and make the profit on volume. Another might be something like releasing a CD where there are some number of CDs that have money inside - folk still buy lotto tickets when the economy sucks. Personally, I stopped buying anything other than indie stuff ever since this strident militanism on the part of the Industry started. I mighjt even agree with thier motives but I'm not going to give my money to them as I disagree with thier tactics.
I'm kind of in the same boat as jaklumen. The vast majority of the file trading I've done has been to get stuff that the industry has decided isn't economically feasible to publish -- out-of-print albums and TV show episodes that haven't come out on DVD. I can understand them wanting to go after people who are pirating the latest Metallica album, but I think it's a bit unfair to hoard intellectual property, refuse to make it available, and then declare it illegal to make other copies of it.
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There's an article on today's USA Today on-line about some file-sharing companies vowing to protect the privacy of their users. The article indicates that most other file sharing companies will be doing this as well. http://www.usatoday.com/life/music/news/2003-06-26-swap_x.htm
resp:9 The other thing I used to do was buy used music. Sadly, deja vu discs and tapes at the Parkway in Richland, WA closed shop sometime ago, when, I have no idea. Their prices and quality was really nice-- the local Hastings chain, by comparison, had worse prices and the CDs were usually in worse shape. So I don't feel like I have any real alternative right now. resp:10 Have you not checked out Rhapsody, by Real Networks? I know not everyone is thrilled with the RealOne player, but I believe this is the PC competition right now, and I think the songs are slightly cheaper (79 cents).
One of the interesting tactics on the part of the RIAA et al is to lobby municipalities to require "used record stores" to obtain a license and adhere to the same strict standards as pawn shops. This has not been reported by any media outlet as far as I can tell. Not only do you have to pay full knuckle for a bunch of crap to get one good cut, but you can't even re-sell the crap compilation when you are done.
The Washington Post ran an overview piece on the race by the authorized download services to tap into the user base of the unauthorized file sharing systems. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A29635-2003Jun25.html There's one quote I wanted to mention: following a discussion of the tremendous wealth and breadth of music available on the unauthorized services, we read this: > RealNetworks Chief Strategy Officer Richard Wolpert questioned the > need to have millions of available songs, saying "80 to 90 percent > of the songs people download [on free services] are the same couple > hundred songs." > If pay services can provide most of the songs people are looking for, > and do it in a safe, user-friendly environment, typical consumers will > use them, he added. Who cares about all the music below the Top 100? Those people don't count, in the corporate view of the future.
It won't work. People want to know they have the other songs available, even if they don't use many of them.
Huh?
#16 seemed clear to me. Wolpert's statement strikes me as idiotic from an economic point of view, given the low cost of disk storage.
Re 16-17 (speaking as the parent of a 4-year-old): Just like it's nice to have 64 crayons in the box, even though you may never have a need for burnt sienna or raw umber.
Re #18: It's not the disk storage, it's negotiating the rights to distribute all those songs. The record labels are, I understand, still pretty reluctant to really open up their catalogs.
That doesn't make much sense to me as an explanation for the behavior being discussed. Why would they be willing to open up the part of their catalog that accounts for 95% of the sales but reluctant to offer the rest?
Ask Disney.
This whole thing is actually an exercise on the part of the recording industry to direct attention elsewhere from the fundamental problem. They are producing crap and they are producing it on media that for all intents and purposes doesn't wear out. And they are doing so in a corporate environment burdened by huge debt generated from the focus on revenue based compensation of management due to laws passed under the clinton administration (you knew I couldn't pass that one up even though it is a fact). Instead of being compensated by returning profits to stockholders in the form of dividends corporate management came to be compensated by increases in revenue generating increased value of stock. Thus the flurry of mergers and acquisitions and thus the incentive to 'turnaround' transactions which did absolutely nothing to profit - indeed in a small way did damage - but generated nice revenue numbers. So you have a general problem in the general case that is applied to the recording industry where a general downturn in sales - you have less young people to begin with who are the one's buying the hot new acts. Plus you have a product that is generally eternal - once the babyboomers bought all their tunes on CD they generally stopped buying huge amounts of tunes. The Internet magnified a problem that had always been there, those too cheap to buy the original product prefering instead to 'tape' the tunes -accept a 2nd or X-generation product that unfortunately in this case were generally as good as the 1st generation product. It is easy and it produces good results. The now dept burdened recording industry looks for a convenient excuse for piss poor financials and settles on a convenient and visible target - the Internet file swappers - as a reason why they are moribund. Sure the Internet makes it easy to swap music. The problem with the RIAA et al's case is that there is absolutely no proof that they suffer any major damage as a result. I personally would suggest that the practice of sharing music has been common among that market segment as long as there has been an ability to easily record replays of the media. It used to be record to tape, now it is CD to CD. The difference is only in the quality not the activity. Again, the Internet makes it easier to do many things on a larger scale - among them distribute files that happen to be music. I would suggest however in this particular case that were the RIAA et al able to completely shut down the Internet file sharing and develop foolproof and working copy protection they would see little or no increase in revenue or profit as those modern versions of those 'tapers' would simply revert to exactly that level of technology - thier TARGETS weren't their market in the first place. There already is a huge market for movies even on quality packaged DVD that are clearly somebody in a movie theater with a camcorder. There would simply be a huge market for those that would be satisfied with CDs of music duped from copy proof media played in a studio and re-recorded digitally -heck, while driving you probably couldn't even tell the difference between an original and such. It is only marginally less convenient to dupe music CDs borrowed from the local library than downloaded off the Internet. What are they going to do next, go after libraries? And its not like the actual artists see a wif of a hint of any change in their revenue stream regardless and if they are clever they should adopt the open source model in their own version - a buck from many people that like what you are doing and want to support you so you can continue to do good stuff may be more than what the artist might get a small fraction of in the old model of the business. Personally, I don't do the download bootleg music thing, but I sure think that an industry that doesn't adapt to the current realities of the situation is doomed to go the way of the quill pen - which you can still buy to this day but there ain't a whole lot of money or market for.
Re 23. Generally agreed. (Sometimes Nasby and I do see things from the same point of view.)
I think partly, too, they got hooked on the big spike in revenue that happened when people switched from CD to LP and bought new copies of all the music they already owned. Now that's gone, and in spite of casting about a bit they haven't found a format that will let them do that again.
Err, I meant switched from LP to CD up there, of course.
No evidence that RIAA is damaged by file swappers? What do you mean? They commissioned studies themselves proving huge damages! </sarcasm>
Yeah, their record sales should've skyrocketed, despite declining
quality.
I don't know whether they archive their programs for any length of time, but on July 4th the Minnesota Public Radio program "Marketplace", which is syndicated on many public stations, had a quite good piece about several musicians who have successfully opted out of the major-label system. As I recall it was at the end of the program. Also, they mentioned that their web site would have additional links to the musicians interviewed and their music.
what IS the best and secure P2P program.
I don't know which is the most secure. I've been using WinMX, which at least doesn't come with any spyware.
There's much discussion of how one would run a "private" or "anonymous" P2P program in the wake of the RIAA's threats to start handing out lawsuits next month. Blubster issued a press release, and so on, forgive me for not having any links handy. From my reading of the P2P news pages, it seems that most systems are focusing on eliminating the ability to gather a list of all files being offered at a particular IP address. This was originally a feature of Napster, IIRC; the idea was that if you discovered that user Jane Doe at a certain address offered a Metallica song file you liked, you might be interested in seeing what else Jane Doe liked. However, this feature also allows the RIAA and others to look for who is offering the biggest file collections online, and so now it's being removed. I don't see how complete P2P anonymity is possible, outside of a system like Ian Clarke's "Freenet." Even there, one can probably determine the IP address serving up a particular piece of a file. But removing the ability to search for large collections online makes the RIAA's lawsuit plans much more of a crapshoot, in public relations terms.
Ah, and here's today's article on this very subject, from Cnet and Declan McCullagh: "P2P's Little Secret" http://news.com.com/2100-1029_3-1023735.html?tag=cd_mh
From today's New York Times: "Harry Potter and the Internet Pirates" http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/technology/14BOOK.html The most recent Harry Potter book is being put online by fans. As the book is not originally available in digital form, those posting it to the net are scanning it (tedious) or participating in group typing projects (even more tedious). Non-english-speakers who are too impatient to wait for authorized translations are getting their own versions in their home languages prepared and posted to the Internet. The NYT article does not attempt to explore the motivations behind this gift economy, but it is one of the better explorations of the concept I've seen.
If I borrow a copy of the book from my next door neighbor, would that be a crime too? So many of the things have been printed, that I suspect that anyone who wants to read it could pretty easily borrow it someplace. Where is the line?
I have a feeling that if publishers thought they could prevent the borrowing of books (or the resale of books), they would certainly try to do that.
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OH man, I sold my text books back after writing "fuck you" in them. While I thought that significantly added to the text, I suppose the authors might disagree. HAW!
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If books were a more recent invention, borrowing them probably would be restricted. Video rental stores pay a *lot* more to buy movies than you pay for your own copy.
Reading about Columba, patron saint of Scotland, was it? people had some stiff feelings about books in ancient times-- they didn't like folks copying them.
DirecTV is taking an anti-piracy stand that borders on extortion. There's a good article about it here: http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6402 Basically, if you've bought a smart card reader in the past from one of the businesses they've busted, they assume you're pirating their signal without any other evidence. They send you a letter demanding that you send them the reader along with $3500, or they'll file criminal charges against you. If you ignore the letter, they file the charges and then offer to settle again for $10,000 -- a lot of money, but still less than defending yourself in court against a behemoth like DirecTV. So far pretty much everyone has paid up. A class action suit in Los Angeles accusing them of extortion was dismissed, and the plaintiffs were ordered to pay $100,000 in legal fees to DirecTV in addition to the money DirecTV had already asked for. Only a handful of cases have gone against them; one case in Michigan ended in a summary judgement against DirecTV when it was discovered that the defendent didn't own a satellite dish, for example. But of course the trick here is that the money they're asking for isn't quite enough to make defending yourself worth it -- it's cheaper to just pay up.
A brief news item. Apparently Rep. Howard Berman is sponsoring legislation that could result in jail time for trading as little as one MP3 on the Internet. Details are pretty sketchy and it's unlikely that this will go anywhere. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31800.html
So the moral of the story is to pay cash!
RE#43 -- That's a Smartcard *Programmer*, not a reader that DirecTV is going mad over.
Yes, you're right. That was my mistake when typing my summary.
"The music industry has won at least 871 federal subpoenas against computer users suspected of illegally sharing music files on the Internet, with roughly 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, U.S. court officials said Friday." ... "The RIAA's subpoenas are so prolific that the U.S. District Court in Washington, already suffering staff shortages, has been forced to reassign employees from elsewhere in the clerk's office to help process paperwork..." From the associated press via Slashdot: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92351,00.html
This afternoon I stumbled across some late June - early July reports of European copy-protected CDs causing physical damage to consumer equipment. Everything is very rumorish. Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells 2003" album has been singled out for particular concern. I dunno, see what you think: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2003/7/10/181528/569 http://ukcdr.org/issues/cd/docs/damage.shtml http://www.rcarter.34sp.com/oldfield/tubularbells2003.html
Whoa, good thing I have the original Bells CD.
Word on Slashdot is that Boston College, among others, has refused DMCA subpoenas on the grounds that release of student records requires notification and other procedures also mandated by Federal law.
The Register is reporting that MIT is fighting a DMCA subpoena by the RIAA: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/31891.html They're claiming the RIAA didn't give them enough time to meet their FERPA (Family Education Rights and Privacy Act) notification requirements.
I just found buymusic.com, which is the Windows version of the "official" music buying service. I even bought a song from it, for .99. It has restrictions (can only be on 1 computer, and burned on 3 cds) which they say are enforced by coding. It's rather interesting, although I don't think I'll be using it very much. (Not much folk, although they DO have Great Big Sea. I will probably pick up a few of my still-un-gotten 80s songs that I can't find on compilation CDs.)
The Associated Press claims to have tracked down some of the RIAA's subpoena targets. At least one, unnamed in the story, is located in Ann Arbor. (via slashdot) http://customwire.ap.org/dynamic/stories/D/DOWNLOADING_MUSIC?SITE=OHCLE&SEC TION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT
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Y'know, with the proliferation of cable modems and Windows viruses, it's only a matter of time until someone hides their shared stuff on somebody else's computer. The subpoena goes to someone without any idea what's going on, and while the perp is going to be mighty hard to find, the RIAA won't be. It's a good bet that the letter to the congresscritter is not going to have nice things to say about them (or M$).
Russ, that idea is old news. This spring I was doing first-level clerical routing of DMCA complaints, and we regularly saw complaints about a common IRC file-sharing bot which would be installed on unwilling Win2K machines with weak admin passwords.
Re #56: There's a virus going around right now that uses victims' machines as proxies to hide the actual addresses of porn servers. It's an all-in-one package; it also spews out spam emails advertising itself as a porn site.
I don't know that my copy of Tubular Bells is an 'original' cd, but I have had it for a couple of years. Now I've an excuse other than price to stop buying discs with music on them.
This story is about folks going into competition with Clear Channel in the concert promotion business; most of it is long and windy, but I wanted to use one short quote: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/07/26/MN199320.DTL "Concert attendance has dropped in three consecutive years, and only rising ticket prices have kept revenues up." Another report suggesting that the plunge in pop/rock music concert attendance started at the same time as the slide in CD sales, suggesting that what's happened is either the economy, or else a cultural turn away from music.
The Ann Arbor News reports on the RIAA's target in Ann Arbor:
http://www.mlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news-5/1059144149193700.xml?aan
ews?NEA
(i hope that works)
Quote: "The RIAA subpoena claims the Ann Arbor user violated
copyright laws by offering up pop and rock songs, including
Madonna's "Material Girl," No Doubt's "Underneath It All"
and the Guns and Roses tune "Sweet Child of Mine.""
This leads me to the catty suggestion that a Kazaa user's best protection
against an RIAA lawsuit may simply be to improve one's taste in music. :)
:)
I'm, uh, truly shocked that Ken Josenhans doesn't like Guns and Roses.
That's _Sweet Child O' Mine_.......;-)
I have not got a link immediately at hand. However, Hilary Rosen's replacement at the RIAA is the former chief of staff of the Republican Senate Majority Leader. This most likely represents a tremendous boost in access and influence over legislation for the RIAA.
Oh boy. http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=industryNews&storyID=3173482
It says: "LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The music industry's leading trade group on Monday named Mitch Bainwol, a former top congressional aide with contacts in the Republican party, as its new chief executive and top lobbyist in Washington." But it's accompanied by a photo of Saddam Hussein. Ken #60: I conceive that it's possible that a rise in file-sharing, leading to a glut in listening to recorded-music, might dampen down the desire of students to attend concerts. But more likely the fall of big- ticket pop-music concert items is due to the fact that they suck, and the "safety first" attitude of concert promoters is responsible for that.
(By "concert promoters" I don't mean just the ilk of Bill Graham, but the whole record industry.)
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The Fresno Bee profiles one Fresno-area target of a RIAA subpoena: http://www.fresnobee.com/local/story/7187003p-8115681c.html "Could file sharing cost Fresno man $45 million?"
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SBC's Pacific Bell internet service provider is contesting the DMCA
subpoenas they have received from the RIAA for alleged file sharing.
SBC makes objections on procedural grounds -- subpoenas being issued
from the wrong federal court, and multiple individuals being targeted
in a single subpoena -- and they also make constitutional privacy
claims on behalf of their customers. Many news stories on this everywhere,
here's one:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2003-07-31-pac-bell_x.htm
-----
Vivendi Universal, the French conglomerate which owns the largest
music company, reports distressing results for the first half of 2003.
"Fewer international releases, currency effects, and weakness in
the music market helped push sales at Vivendi's Universal Music
down 29 percent to 1.068 billion euros. At constant exchange rates,
sales dropped 19 percent."
((Vivendi reports its results in Euros, and the Euro has gone up
relative to the dollar this year. I think the 19 percent number is
the key one -- this is a fall twice the predicted rate for CD sales
this year. Also, this news story is measuring money, not units sold.))
http://www.msnbc.com/news/946407.asp?0cv=BA00
MIT and, IIRC, Boston University (or maybe College, I can never keep them straight) are contesting the subpoenas they have received on similar grounds.
MIT is Boston College.
It was MIT and BU. The undergrad working with me thinks she knows the MIT subpoena subject.
Cnet ran this story about discussions between the RIAA and unnamed universities, with a goal of creating a legal online music service aimed at the campuses. http://news.com.com/2100-1027_3-5059030.html?tag=lh My guess is that the RIAA's goal is to tamp down the number of students who run Kazaa and similar services, and thus offer large number of files going outbound from the high-speed University networks -- I speculate that they are hoping to throttle the uploading side of P2P and are willing to sell songs at minimal cost to accomplish that. I expect that the discussions will founder; according to the article, the universities want some sort of all-you-can-eat system, while the record companies remain stuck on the pay-for-each-song model. In a related topic, I realized last week that the RIAA has timed its lawsuits to coincide almost precisely with the students' return to their schools. ----- In a story reported everywhere, so I won't bother pulling up a link: Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota would like to chat with the RIAA about the shotgun approach they are taking with their subpoenas.
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Hey tod! You might want to close those table tags...
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Sorry, on the main page.
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Ahem! The html table tags on http://www.megachump.com/ are not closed. Oh, never mind.
Huh?
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Essay from Cnet which has some interesting arguments:
"Congress, the new copyright bully"
http://news.com.com/2010-1071_3-5060347.html?tag=fd_nc_1
Quotes:
"Congress has become exasperated with its inability to get Americans
to stop engaging in copyright infringement."
...
"In the past decade, through dozens of congressional oversight hearings
where USUALLY ONLY INDUSTRY REPRESENTATIVES TESTIFY, Congress has been
completely convinced that rampant copyright infringement threatens to
destroy the American economy. Having internalized this threat, Congress
is now determined to fix that problem the only way it knows how--threaten
ordinary citizens with jail, despite collateral consequences."
((emphasis KRJ))
"Rather than making a seemingly endless number of ad hoc proposals,
Congress needs to develop an integrated policy about criminal copyright
infringement. To do so, Congress needs to recognize two things. First,
it is not acceptable to put average Americans at the peril of going
to jail for doing everyday activities. Second, if the existing laws
are not yielding the desired results, perhaps they were bad policy,
in which case making them tougher only compounds the initial policy
failure."
The author gets near to my question:
why is the government essentially refusing to enforce the existing law,
the No Electronic Theft Act, against file sharing users? And, given
that failure, what does Congress expect to accomplish by passing
even worse laws?
Theft Act of 1997, and given this refusal, what does it
The newspaper of Tower Records' home town, Sacramento, California, is running what sure looks like an obituary for the chain. Tower has until September 30 to come up with a huge pile of money which it owes its bankers. This money was theoretcially going to come from the sale of the chain, but there don't appear to be any takers. (As we previously noted here, Best Buy rid itself of its Musicland CD retail operations, including the Mediaplay and Sam Goody operations, for zero dollars a few weeks back.) The article says Tower was borrowing and expanding aggressively in the face of the looming crash in music sales. http://www.sacbee.com/content/business/story/7190900p-8137801c.html ((referenced via www.dmusic.com))
Slashdot led me to this absolutely fascinating essay from somebody's "Legal Theory" blog, too rich and complex for me to summarize briefly. It's about the RIAA's policy of massive lawsuits and it speculates on likely follow-on scenarios. http://lsolum.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_lsolum_archive.html#10597492985814238 4
Interesting way of looking at it. A friend of mine suggested today that the motive behind the push to make copyright violation a felony might be to make sure people who feel strongly about legalizing file sharing are prevented from voting.
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The essay is "Copynorms and Deterence" and is a bit further down the page that it was. I found it at http://lsolum.blogspot.com/2003_08_01_lsolum_archive.html#106057207480148 411 It's disussing the RIAA's new-found penchant for suing people.
Definitely a good article. I wish I'd understood the legal references a bit better, though.
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Random data points on sales: http://apnews.myway.com/article/20030815/D7SUIII00.html "Country Music Execs Expect Big Late Sales" > Last year, country was one of the few bright spots in a down year for > music sales. Country sales grew 12.2 percent, while the recording industry > overall was down 10.7 percent. > > This year, country sales through last month were off about 6 percent > from the same period a year ago, from 34.6 million units to > 32.5 million units, according to Nielsen SoundScan. ... > Even with the slump, country continues to fare better than other genres. > Overall album sales fell from 358 million units to 328 million units > through last month, about 8.4 percent - continuing a decline that the > industry blames on file swapping and the soft economy. ---- Meanwhile, over in Britain, the British Phonographic Institute (BPI; the UK version of the RIAA trade group) says that unit sales of album-length CDs have hit a new record high. They report a 12% increase in units sold in the album length format. The trade group does whine that they had to cut prices a bit and thus revenue didn't grow much. http://news.dmusic.com/article/7438 http://www.bpi.co.uk/flashmainindex.html
... and the sales of MP3 players are surging: http://www.mi2n.com/press.php3?press_nb=55622 I think these numbers are from 1 January 2003 until the last few weeks. All MP3 players: unit sales are up 138%, compared to the same period in 2002. Headset portable Mp3 players: unit sales are up 202%, dollar sales are up 104% (which means that the price cutting has been ferocious) In-dash car MP3 players: both unit and dollar sales up 31%
Text article and opinion on the British CD sales report:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/netmusic/story/0,13368,1020971,00.html
"Music sales defy the doomsayers"
http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,1020948,00.html
"How the pirates became saviours of the record industry"
(summary: by introducing competition and forcing the
British CD firms to lower retail prices)
Thanks for the legal stuff. Jim found a printed copy at the library.
(Sindi might have been commenting on the "Legal Theory" blog I referenced above, but my best guess is that her response was intended to go in Agora's "Bummed" item. Best wishes & get well soon, Sindi!)
The Sacramento Bee "pre-obituary" article on Tower Records mentions the bankruptcy of Wherehouse. (I believe we've established here before that there is a store or chain in Michigan by that name which is not the one the SacBee and I are talking about.) There were several small Wherehouse outlets in my area, but I hadn't been in one in years, because they were very lowest-denominator and didn't carry much that I might be interested in. (A far cry from 30-35 years ago, when I cut my musical-collecting teeth on Wherehouse's meticulously-organized classical LP section, long before Tower made it south of San Francisco in the Bay Area.) The result of Wherehouse's bankruptcy has been people standing on major street corners - here in Silicon Valley at least, and I saw one in San Luis Obispo last month - waving signs announcing final clearance sales at nearby Wherehouse outlets. So I went. I found virtually no music I wanted to buy. (I got that copy of the Stones' "Forty Licks" at one, but "wanted" is an exaggeration for how I felt about that.) Instead, I bought mostly DVDs, which was easy for me because I've only recently gotten interested in movie-collecting at all. That was June, July. Now there are a lot of vacant husks of buildings sitting around with the word "Wherehouse" on their facades. If Tower goes the same way - there are 5 stores in the Bay Area which together account for 90% of my off-line music purchases - I'll be in line, as I was for the demise of the independent classical retailers 10- 15 years ago. And then I guess I'll go to haunting Borders and B&N.
On somewhat of an aside, I've been tipped off to "Tape-Op" magazine, a pretty cool and non-fluffy recording/engineering magazine. I'm on my second issue, and I'm pretty interested in tracking down some of the bands mentioned. Mostly I've never even heard of them, but somehow they've gotten several records out each. Must be *something* good about them.
Hope their mag is better than their Website. Just paid it a visit and it sucks. I hadn't heard of TapeOp so I was hoping to learn more about it.
Well, the website doesn't seem to have the article text, which of course the magazine has. Apparently this is a pretty small operation.
TapeOp rocks...been a subscriber from issue 2, when it was stilla Xeroxed 'zine. What did you find wrong with their website Greg? you also can't beat the subscription price: $0.00 (for 3rd class delivery)
I found it rather bare-bones, in terms of info. There should be a section that explains what the mag is about, who their target audience is, etc. What also would be nice if they archived some of their past issues/articles so people can get a feel for the material.
With those subscription rates, that'sd a lot to ask!
This one's kind of funny. Sharman Networks, the proprietor of Kazaa, has issued a DMCA "Notice and Takedown" order to Google, demanding that Google stop returning information on KazaaLite distributors, because Kazaa Lite infringes on the Kazaa copyrights. (Kazaa Lite is the filesharing program Kazaa with the spyware and advertising stuff removed.) http://slashdot.org/articles/03/08/31/1349214.shtml?tid=153&tid=99 http://www.chillingeffects.org/dmca512/notice.cgi?NoticeID=789
That one's funny on several levels.
Sharman Networks is now offering a Kazaa Platinum that axes the spyware and ads, plus has some additional features that I can't remember. I use Kazaa Lite myself, which features a DAT viewer-- which is helpful if the file didn't download completely. This does smack of hypocrisy, yes, but I suppose the company is attempting to ensure their "Platinum" version sells somehow.
I'd never heard of Kazaa Lite but am downloading it now. Thanks, Kazaa!
(What does DAT mean in the context of resp:107 ?)
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Kazaa Lite maintains an opening page for a Google search, an Internet movie database, and some various links. It's just slightly different.
How likely is it that an individual user of Kazaa or Kazaa Lite would get into legal trouble for receiving and/or sharing files? I'm getting risk-adverse in my old age but it's still fun browsing on-line and picking up the occasional old, old download.
Receiving files? Not very likely. sharing files? Much more likely. Maybe I'm more paranoid than the average person, but I'm not taking my chances with either and don't download or share copyrighted material. Never have.
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There's a whole passle of news stories; there will be an even bigger flood
if the RIAA lawsuits hit in the next few days.
p2pnet.net points to this Macworld UK story. An analyst for Raymond James
& Associates argues that, while it looks like the RIAA's lawsuit threats
may have slowed file trading, the period of the lawsuit threats coincides
with an even steeper falloff in CD sales.
http://macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=6800
Or, as an essay at musicdish.com pointed out, fear is not going to
sell CDs.
-----
The RIAA press release on US CD sales for the first half of 2003 has numbers
even more dire than the numbers in the Macworld article. The numbers
indicate that the slide in CD sales is accelerating.
In tabular form: decline in units sold decline in dollars
first half 2002 10.1% 6.7%
first half 2003 ** 15.8% ** 12.0%
The story suggests that the crash in CD retailers -- 1,000 stores closed
in the first half of 2003, the article says -- and the decline in sales
are starting to feed on each other. The article says that surviving
music retail outlets are shrinking their CD inventory.
http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=196736
5
-----
Slashdot points to a BBC news article which says that hundreds of lawsuits
from the RIAA are imminent. The RIAA will offer to settle for $15,000
initially; if the targets of the lawsuit offer any opposition, the price
of the settlement rises to $50,000.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3201399.stm
Billboard story on RIAA press release -- wait a minute, wait a minute, read the fine print. The RIAA numbers factor in stock returned for full credit from all those closed stores, and it represents product shipped to stores. Soundscan's numbers, which measure sales to consumers, show a much smaller decline of 8.5% year to date. Pardon me, I have to try to get my head to stop spinning now.
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/32636.html A court in France has ordered EMI to issue a refund to a woman who was unable to play a copy-protected CD in her car. Alternatively, EMI can provide a working copy. The CD was essentially ruled to be "defective" under French law.
Interesting little story from The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/32658.html Apparently the Universal Music Group (one of the big five) is going to cut their CD prices by "up to 31%" in hopes of attracting CD buyers back from DVDs and file trading.
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We'll see if it really happens. Record companies have promised to lower their prices before but I don't recall ever seeing the effects at the record stores..
Here's the background on the Universal price cut: sorry I didn't get this summary in earlier. (Written originally for Utne Cafe a couple of days ago:) ----- As if the recorded music industry did not have enough problems with slumping sales: now the labels are facing ferocious demands from their biggest retailers to slash prices. This is from BILLBOARD, August 16. Not available online; Billboard keeps the juicy stuff out of the free section of the public web site. Quote: "For more than 25 years, labels have dictated the terms and have taken the lion's share of the upside. ((profits)) But Wal-Mart, Best Buy, Target, K-mart, Circuit City and other discount store chains now control about 55% of music sales and have finally gained enough marketing muscle to start driving the business model." Sources are unnamed throughout the article. It is reported that Best Buy, the only big-box store to stock a decent variety of titles, is threatening to slash its stock to the same level (5000 titles) as the other big-box stores if the labels do not give substantially on price. The goal of the retailers seems to be to get new releases under $10 per CD and then catalog CDs priced a few bucks below that. Some label execs complain that the labels shouldn't be supporting pricing levels which are destroying CD-only "specialty" retailing. "In the past two years, more than 1,000 music specialty chain and independent stores have closed, according to Billboard estimates." "'Soon we will have a marketplace where the people left in business will only be carrying 10% of the SKU's ((titles)),' a distribution executive said." The discount retailers are very unhappy over how music CDs are selling, especially when compared to DVDs and games. One interesting side note: Wal-Mart is insisting that the industry bring back single CDs for top radio hits. ----- end of paraphrase and quotes. Heh. At Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania last weekend, I saw stacks of reasonably recent movie DVDs priced under $9. Consumers just don't see a reason for well-promoted DVDs to be significantly cheaper than audio CDs. So, I believe the Universal price cuts to $12.98 list are quite real: this will put selling prices at $12 in Borders and $10 at Best Buy. I expect the other major labels to follow Universal's lead. My questions: what does this mean for independent CD pricing, and what does it mean for online pricing such as iTunes?
Well, DUH!, if there are less stores, not wonder there are
less CD sales.
And before you double-duh me, any stats on where the
store closed was the major CD retailer in the market? I'm talking
about markets like Houghton Lake, MI, or Mount Pleasant or
Houghton, MI? Places where a big chain replaced the ma & pa
store, or the local chain store, only to later leave town.
<cough>tower<cough>
"The article says that surviving music retail outlets are shrinking their CD inventory." How is a smaller inventory going to get buyers back into their stores?
Cutting inventory is a rational business response on a product whose sales are down 30% over three years. (That's the RIAA's number, from an sfgate.com story.) There's a widely reported story -- haven't got the link right now -- where a business analyst argues that the slide in CD sales is irreversible, no matter what happens in the file sharing wars. I expect the retailers think that there are few brick-and-mortar shoppers left who are attracted by a large inventory. (This is little comfort to David, who is probably one of those few.) My guess is that most people who want a large inventory have moved to the Internet, either to authorized online CD sellers or to file sharing.
That's pretty much what I've done. My assumption now is that any store I walk into isn't going to stock what I'm looking for, so I might as well buy online and save myself the trip.
Most of my music purchasing is ragtime, a very specialized niche indeed. It's been my assumption for years that any store I walk into isn't going to stock what I'm looking for. By contrast, without expending much effort I can find just about anything I want for sale on the internet. Online purchasing is a godsend for me. In many instances, I can even listen to samples from the recording before I buy. Although stock diversification might make me *slightly* more interested in going to a record store and browsing, I can't imagine that the brick-and-mortar stores can come close to matching the diversity of product that I can find online.
A handful of items from The Register today: First is an editorial about the Universal Music price cuts. Among other things, it points out that CD prices have remained constant since they were introduced, even as volume increased, and that Universal was, along with other record labels, found guilty by the FTC of price fixing only a month ago. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/32690.html Second is an article about the RIAA's apparent plans to offer amnesty to small-time noncommercial file traders. Frankly, this is probably the only way for them to stick with their enforcement program without creating a PR disaster. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32681.html Finally, U.S. District Court judge Rebecca Pallmeyer has denied part of a motion for summary judgement against Skylink Technologies, brought by Chamberlain Group. Chamberlain had argued that Skylink was violating the DMCA by producing garage door opener remotes compatible with Chamberlain's openers. Judge Pallmeyer commented, "The homeowner has a legitimate expectation that he or she will be able to access the garage even if his transmitter is misplaced or malfunctions." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/7/32684.html
The Washington Post ran a puff piece about Mitch Bainwol, who is Hilary Rosen's replacement as the head of the RIAA. Bainwol, as has been mentioned before, is frighteningly well connected; as former chief of staff to US Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, he has direct access to the most powerful circles in government. http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1804&ncid=1804&e=1&u=/washp ost/20030905/tc_washpost/a29504_2003sep5
Today's New York Times has a piece entitled "Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy" which relates the music-industry lobby's new tactic in their war against peer-to-peer file sharing networks: smear them by linking them in lawmakers' minds with pornography and then play the "won't someone please think of the children?" trump card. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/technology/07PORN.html?pagewanted=2&hp
Gee, I thought it was mostly children teaching the adults how to file-trade.
-----Original Message----- From: BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM [mailto:BreakingNews@MAIL.CNN.COM] Sent: Monday, September 08, 2003 12:46 PM Subject: CNN Breaking News -- Recording industry files 261 lawsuits against Internet music file sharers, announces amnesty program for individuals.
Best story I've seen so far is on Cnet. The RIAA is promising thousands more lawsuits. http://news.com.com/2100-1023_3-5072564.html?tag=fd_lede1_hed
It was thought that the RIAA was fishing for unsympathetic defendants after it subpoenaed names from the ISPs. I guess they didn't filter well; the first publicized defendant is a 71-year-old grandfather who says his grandkids did it: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2003/09/08/state1547E DT0101.DTL
I'm a little suspicious of the RIAA's amnesty program. It seems to me that what you're doing is identifying yourself to them and admitting guilt, thus saving them a lot of work if they ever want to prosecute you.
It's a bit hard to sue someone you've promised not to sue.
The Ann Arbor News has 2 articles on the RIAA in today's Connection section. (Unfortunately, I do not have the links.) One article dealt with the lawsuits. The other talked about how the recording industry wants to keep everyone from copying CDs, or create half-assed method to make it less worthwhile. One proposed method would allow you to send an MP3 to a friend via email, but would block your computer from listening to it until he deletes it off his hard drive.
That sounds silly and like it probably wouldn't work with MP3.
It would probably require that everybody runs Windows, too.
Re 135. Yes, but there are many other plaintiffs (e.g., songwriters) who could use those amnesty documents as evidence in a lawsuit.
Re #134: With good reason; the various entities which make up the RIAA probably are not all bound by the hold-harmless clause, and could subpoena the full list of confessors.
RIAA is being sued over the Amnesty for deceptive practice and fraud.
Oh, there is just a ton of stuff today... I only have time to dump
in some of the highlights.
"Music Firms Claim Public Backing"
http://www.zeropaid.com/news/articles/auto/09112003d.php
(with a click-through to the BBC)
The RIAA had a poll done in the days before the lawsuits were filed,
and they claim the support of 52% of the US public for their campaign
against song swappers. No news on whether that support holds for
suing Brianna LaHaie, age 12.
-----
"Artists blast record companies over lawsuits against downloaders"
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2003/09/11/MN12066.DTL
(SF Chronicle)
Quotes:
Artists are feeling the downturn in sales, too. "My record royalties
have dropped 80 percent since 1999," said Steve Miller, whose
greatest hits album has been a perennial best-seller since its 1978
release. "To me, it's one of the weirdest things that's ever happened
to me because people act like it's OK. "
Recording artists have watched their record royalties erode over the
past few years ("My Van Halen royalties are history," said vocalist
Sammy Hagar), but, in fact, few musicians earn the bulk of their
income from record sales.
...
Many artists painted the record industry as a bloated, overstuffed
giant with too many mouths to feed and too many middlemen to pay,
selling an overpriced, often mediocre product. "They have all these
abnormal practices that keep driving the price up," said Gregg
Rollie, founding member of Santana and Journey. "People think
musicians make all that money, but it's not true. We make the
smallest amount."
((end quotes from SF Chronicle))
-----
Yale's LawMeme carries an article suggesting that the RIAA's lawsuit
tactics are whipping up anger, at least among the targets, at Kazaa,
for allowing them to get sued. The author suggests that this is a
tactic to encourage Congress to pin liability firmly on Kazaa and
make it easy for the RIAA to sue Kazaa, and any future technology
which deals with copyrighted work such as the VCR, into oblivion. Or
else Congress might just ban Kazaa outright. The longer term
question is: do the copyright holders get to have veto over new
technology?
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=119
7
Even more stuff at lawmeme which I have not had a chance to digest
yet, but which I don't want to lose and which looks fascinating:
http://research.yale.edu/lawmeme/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1196
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I'm kind of surprised at how the lawsuits are playing out. I figured the RIAA would be careful not to sue anyone who would be a sympathetic defendant. Suing a 12-year-old seems like really poor PR.
A lot of the predictions about this seemed to hinge on (a) the public becoming outraged over lawsuits against sympathetic defendants, and/or (b) the tiny number of possible lawsuits dwarfed by the tens of millions doing file sharing. But I'm not seeing any outrage from the unaffiliated public, and I do see file sharers becoming worried. I tend to subscribe to the music-industry-is-doomed thesis. Is it really a workable business model to deliberately price people like me out of the market? But the lawsuit offensive may be at least somewhat effective in suppressing MP3 sharing.
BMG/Arista are going to give CD copy prevention another whirl on Sept. 23. They're going to use the SunnComm system which installs a "lock" on your PC. I was worried they were going to be somewhat stealthy about this but apparently when you put the CD in your PC you'l have to click on an End User License Agreement. In this posting from cdfreaks.com, the first response has pasted in the FAQ from SunnComm on this process: http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/7953
Use of the compactDisc logo ensures that the disc will play
in all compactDisc players. Subverting that is deception or
creates a defective disc.
I fell that a label, at least as big as the parental
advisory label should be on disc, saying that copy protection
has been added to this disc. It should be a permanent label
on both the materials and the disc.
It happened 20 years ago with computer software. There was a big push
among software providers to copy-protect their work. Some developers
even required one of various hardware devices ("dongles") be attached
to the computer, which were necessary to enable the software to run.
It wasn't long, just a few years, before there was a big backlash.
First of all, there was no software program which could be used but
not copied. Clever programmers found ways to copy anything they
wanted to copy.
Second, people refused to buy software that was over-protected. Some
previously very successful companies evaporated over their refusal to
get rid of their copyright schemes. Floppy disks were too fragile to
use without backing them up. The dongles were obtrusive, they
interfered with other programs, and they also got damaged or lost.
Most software companies -- all of the ones you've ever heard of --
turned to installation key strings or just gave up on copy protection
entirely. They turned to a marketing effort which worked. Lots of
people consider it dishonorable to make copies for friends of computer
programs now.
The music industry is going down the same path. I don't believe it
will last for them, either. People *needed* particular software
packages. There are few who can't live without a specific CD or
song. I am confident the market will channel people's tastes around
the more unreasonable efforts by the music industry, and that we'll
wind up with very reasonable methods of distributing music,
specifically including the Internet, in a few years.
Dongles are still around, although not for mass-market software.
AHA ! DONGLES! THE VERY N AME SOUNDS RUDE!
Yup. It gets really annoying when you need to run two such programs on one computer, and have to try to figure out how to chain two dongles off one port and have them both work.
The link for this story goes away shortly, but maybe someone will have put it on the web somewhere... LA Times, the hometown paper for Big Music: "One Voice on Piracy" http://www.latimes.com/la-fi-behind10sep10133420,1,2671593.story Quote:------- >>Warner Music Group Chairman Roger Ames wouldn't budge. The industry >>veteran refused last summer to join an effort by his four major >>competitors to sue illegal downloaders who were crushing the >>industry's bottom line. >> Ames insisted that before the labels unleashed their attorneys and >>risked a potential public relations backlash, they needed to provide >>consumers with an alternative, a place where the pirates could >>legally download songs from all five major record companies. >> "We made it clear to everyone that we weren't prepared to go >>forward with lawsuits until there were ATTRACTIVE and COMPREHENSIVE >>online services up and running," said David Johnson, Warner Music's >>general counsel. (endquote)-----(emphasis KRJ) And here, in a nutshell, we see why Big Music is doomed. They have totally lost touch with the consumers. Their general counsel can, with a straight face, describe Pressplay and Musicnet as "attractive and comprehensive online services," when these services are mocked by all knowledgable consumers for their difficulty of use; and when their usage figures are so low, they remain unpublished; and when huge amounts of recorded music remain unavailable through them. (It's not just that Pressplay and Musicnet are pay services. Apple's iTunes is a pay service and it is not widely mocked; and it has published its sales figures from the get-go.) Or, let me put it another way. In the history of American capitalism, when has an industry responded to consumer demand by saying, "No, under no circumstances will we give you what you want, you must take what we are selling and that's it." ---------- ((I just had a flash of insight. Big Music is showing the consumer relations skills of the industries of the Soviet Union.))
Or:
Big Music has one product line, compact discs, which consumers are
turning away from. They have a new product line, the crippled download
services, which consumers have totally rejected.
So, faced with rejection in the market, Big Music turns to state
power to keep its customers from fleeing.
It's so perfectly Soviet.
#125: "My assumption now is that any store I walk into isn't going to stock what I'm looking for, so I might as well buy online and save myself the trip." Right. Which is why reducing inventory is self-defeating. Buying online is wonderful when you already know what you want. What gets me is that I have never yet figured out a satisfactory (for me) way to browse online to look for things that I might want. Of course, record browsing was rendered much more difficult by the advent of the CD and the consequent virtual disappearance of back-cover liner notes. But I still browse in record stores as well as in bookstores. At least most of the record stores have in-store players now.
I guess I'm a little different...I don't think I've ever bought an album because I liked something I read about it. I have to hear a couple songs off the album and like them before I'll buy it.
I think I can read about an album and buy it, but I have to have heard the group before (for example, I just saw a blurb that Runrig has a new album out. I haven't heard it, but I'd buy it in a second if I had the cash.)
Yeah, I'll grant you that. If I like a group well enough, I'll buy albums just on the strength of their name.
The Register has an article today with a great quote from SBC lawyer Jim Ellis: "Under the RIAA's interpretation of the law, anyone willing to pay a small fee and represent that its copyright is being violated would be entitled to know the name, address and phone number of the person behind an anonymous e-mail," said Ellis. "This would readily lead the Internet stalker, the child predator or the abusive spouse to their victims." (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/32905.html)
We must shut down the RIAA to 'Save the Children'.
Metadiscussion: Agora has rolled over for the fall. I will let this sit for a day or so to allow a few other items to establish themselves in the new Agora conference, then I'll start The Sixteenth Napster Item. In the meantime, here was an entertaining rant from USA Today: "Free CD downloads: Recording industry can't put this cat back in bag" http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2003-09-23-hughes-edit_x.ht m A university business professor writes about her attempts to give up Kazaa and use the legal download services. Quote from near the end: "The next day, I asked my students in class if they could recommend any good legal sites for downloading music. I got a blank, puzzled silence in response. Finally, one student asked, 'Why would you want to do that?' "Dutifully, I recited the RIAA's mantra: 'I don't shoplift; I shouldn't steal music.' "'But the legal sites don't have any good music,' explained one earnest senior in the front row."
I, too, would be interested in learning about legal sites which offer downloads of good music. Unfortunately my search efforts haven't been especially rewarding, though you do find stuff here and there.
I don't know about downloading it, but for streaming audio the BBC Archives are really fabulous for the kinds of music the BBC offers.
You have several choices: