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| Author |
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| 25 new of 162 responses total. |
krj
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response 132 of 162:
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Sep 8 19:37 UTC 2003 |
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
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krj
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response 133 of 162:
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Sep 8 22:05 UTC 2003 |
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
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gull
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response 134 of 162:
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Sep 9 13:35 UTC 2003 |
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.
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dah
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response 135 of 162:
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Sep 9 18:36 UTC 2003 |
It's a bit hard to sue someone you've promised not to sue.
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otaking
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response 136 of 162:
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Sep 9 21:56 UTC 2003 |
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.
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dah
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response 137 of 162:
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Sep 9 22:24 UTC 2003 |
That sounds silly and like it probably wouldn't work with MP3.
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scott
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response 138 of 162:
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Sep 9 23:04 UTC 2003 |
It would probably require that everybody runs Windows, too.
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polygon
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response 139 of 162:
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Sep 10 16:58 UTC 2003 |
Re 135. Yes, but there are many other plaintiffs (e.g., songwriters)
who could use those amnesty documents as evidence in a lawsuit.
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russ
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response 140 of 162:
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Sep 11 00:33 UTC 2003 |
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.
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other
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response 141 of 162:
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Sep 11 03:04 UTC 2003 |
RIAA is being sued over the Amnesty for deceptive practice and fraud.
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krj
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response 142 of 162:
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Sep 11 23:18 UTC 2003 |
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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mynxcat
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response 143 of 162:
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Sep 12 13:45 UTC 2003 |
This response has been erased.
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gull
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response 144 of 162:
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Sep 12 13:48 UTC 2003 |
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.
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polygon
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response 145 of 162:
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Sep 12 14:53 UTC 2003 |
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.
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krj
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response 146 of 162:
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Sep 12 19:25 UTC 2003 |
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
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tpryan
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response 147 of 162:
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Sep 12 20:16 UTC 2003 |
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.
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jep
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response 148 of 162:
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Sep 13 03:47 UTC 2003 |
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.
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scott
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response 149 of 162:
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Sep 13 13:31 UTC 2003 |
Dongles are still around, although not for mass-market software.
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dah
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response 150 of 162:
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Sep 13 13:52 UTC 2003 |
AHA ! DONGLES! THE VERY N AME SOUNDS RUDE!
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gull
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response 151 of 162:
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Sep 15 23:35 UTC 2003 |
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.
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krj
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response 152 of 162:
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Sep 16 23:09 UTC 2003 |
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.))
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krj
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response 153 of 162:
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Sep 17 00:33 UTC 2003 |
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.
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dbratman
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response 154 of 162:
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Sep 17 06:26 UTC 2003 |
#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.
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gull
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response 155 of 162:
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Sep 17 13:30 UTC 2003 |
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.
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anderyn
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response 156 of 162:
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Sep 17 15:15 UTC 2003 |
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.)
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