Kinda Late to Complain

[Thalus999]

Look, who can blame the RIAA? They are charged with enforcing the copyrights in music. That is what they are paid to do. They tried to get the court to prohibit software makers like Grokster from making P2P programs. The court said: "Sorry, you have to go after the actual people who are doing the infringement." So they had no choice but to sue the pirates themselves. My sources tell me to expect at least 10,000 law suits by year end. I am also told that local law firms all over the country are taking the cases on contingency so they are counting on getting money in settlements or in court awards. This is real folks. Like it or not, the law is on RIAA's side and all the boycotting and whining will do nothing to change it. If you don't want to get sued, don't share music!

[email protected]

[Ken17625]

Troll.


Prepare for a backlash.

[dverma75]

Originally posted by Ken17625
Troll.


Prepare for a backlash.

Totally agree


http://profiles.yahoo.com/Thalus_of_marcantia

looks like the e-mail account was opened on Sept 9 also.

[Omyn]

BAN HIM! BAN HIM NOW !

Support the RIAA, theyve been ripping off artists for years why the hell should we support them?

He probably works for them too...

[Kooperman]

Originally posted by Thalus999
[B] If you don't want to get sued, don't share music!
B]

OK, and I really prefer not sharing a Forum with yet another troll-boy....with sources, yet.

[jonnymnemonic]

All they can realistically do is lobby for strong DRM, and begin releasing music only that way. Even that won't work totally (analog recording methods, etc), but it would stem the tide.

Of course, there is a very nasty downside to strong DRM for them too - the only thing preventing the human race from forming a gigantic legal library of purchased works is the lack of strong DRM. If they provide us that, it is a powerful two-edged sword that could just as easily behead them.

Once 50,000 people make their Madonna CDs available in the library for loan, no one will buy another, because that number would be sifficient to satisfy the demands of the entire planet. They sell MILLIONS of CDs now, but that'd cut out 95 percent of their business. If they think a 31 percent loss is big, they haven't seen anything yet if we get our hands on strong DRM, and thereby enable legal network loaning.

Pretty much, the future holds no promise for them. They're damned if they do and damned if they don't. It's like they're in a burning building built within the cone of an active volcano. They can jump from the house to the volcano and back again, and repeat that as often as they wish, but it's going to be excruciatingly painful wherever they jump.

But you're right - they ARE paid to fight the good fight, so they'll go down fighting because they must.

The only thing that concerns me is the welfare of our writers, musicians and movie makers. If they get screwed, we will lose them, and I personally like to read a new book by a favorite author, watch a new movie, listen to a new CD. I could easily live the rest of my life enjoying what has ALREADY been created, but if I can have access to new stuff too, that's certainly preferable.

[tMoD]

Originally posted by Thalus999
Like it or not, the law is on RIAA's side and all the boycotting and whining will do nothing to change it. If you don't want to get sued, don't share music!

I've been saying all along that the RIAA is likely to win; by that I mean drive filesharing underground. If, however, you're telling me to start buying from, and thereby supporting, the exploitative pricks because we can't win- fuck you. That's like telling someone under an oppressive government to join the death squads because they can't win. For me it's ethical, not practical. I will continue to fileshare for as long as I feel I can get away with it- it's called "civil disobedience."

[Theinfamousone]

Great post Johnny. I hadn't thought of the digital library thing.

There's a few things I will say though.

I don't see a big lending library becoming very popular for a few reasons.

One is, the concept of owning a CD and the music thereon has it's own reward. I've never liked the idea of being able to only listen to something when I have the permission of someone else. Or having to pay a subscription for my music, and once I stop paying, the fun is over. That's why iTunes has taken off, people like the idea of being able to listen to it forever, and put it on a CD and listen to it in the car or at a party or whatever.

Another is that it's completely impractical. It would require huge amounts of bandwidth, who would pay for that? You would only be able to listen to it for a limited amount of time, I'd rather just buy the CD. Mainly because, since it's being lent to me, I can't burn it on a CD and listen to it in the car, because how are you going to control where the music is played after it's burned on a CD?

Another is that the court system would never allow that to happen. The Recording Industry gets whatever it wants in the courts, that seems pretty clear. Besides the Grokster and StreamCast case, the law is completely on their side in everything. They are already barely tolerating the idea that people can make personal copies. There's no way the courts would let us kill a multibillion dollar industry (RIAA) just because of some legal loophole (as filehoover so eloquently put a while back).

But on the other hand, I can't see these RIAA lawsuits going much further. The millions the RIAA is wasting on their war, the millions we are donating to fight back, the endless hours programmers are spending to fight back, the millions of dollars of taxpayer dollars that are being wasted on the thousands of subpeonas and endless paper work isn't helping ANYONE! The only winners here are the people that aren't being caught file sharing. Sharman is making millions, CDR media and burner companies are making lots of money and the ISPs are getting tons of customers.

In the end, the only way to set up an uneasy truce is to levy CD-Rs and mp3 players. Canada seems to be fine with how their system is. Everybody wins.

[Pebbles100]

Originally posted by Thalus999
Like it or not, the law is on RIAA's side and all the boycotting and whining will do nothing to change it. If you don't want to get sued, don't share music![

Umm...boycotting and whining...yeah ...

GREAT things happened due to mass 'whining', [ie - civil rights/minority rights, etc.]. That's why we live in the United States. If you don't like our whining, common sense would tell you not to read our posts. Some speculate that the cd [might] follow the same path as vinyl. Technology brought change - that's life. Maybe it's not us afterall who need to change.

[Thalus999]

Originally posted by Omyn
BAN HIM! BAN HIM NOW !

Support the RIAA, theyve been ripping off artists for years why the hell should we support them?

He probably works for them too...

Ok, call me a troll because I stirred up some dissent. But the fact of the matter is I do not work for the RIAA. I just know some lawyers who work in the field. Even if you discount what they have told me, I can't figure out why everyone is so mad at the record industry for making use of the existing laws. That is what they get paid to do. I am a musician who puts out my own CDs. I am not signed with a record company. But it is getting almost impossible to sell my recordings because one person gets one at a concert and the next thing I know it is all over the Internet. If you support musicians, don't share their music. Flattery is one thing. Paying my rent and feeding my baby is another.

[jonnymnemonic]

My vision of the giant legal superlibrary is a giant government-funded network with massive bandwidth, paid for with tax dollars. (Tax dollars pay for all libraries anyway, so why not simply extend the concept.)

Now, when you buy a DRM'd CD (for lack of a better term), you are able to connect to this library and notify it that you are willing to loan the music on it to others. When someone asks for a specific song, the computer checks the number of available licenses, and if it is greater than 0, it sends a message to the original purchaser of the music and his computer locks that machine from playing that song. When that computer verifies that the song has been successfully locked, the government computer sends the song to the person wanting to check it out. Either it immediately starts playing or he gets a specified time (say, 15 minutes), at which time it expires on his computer and the library updates its record that the license is now available again for someone else.

The "checkout time" would obviously vary - movies take a while to watch, books even longer to read. That could be set on a global basis perhaps, or possibly the original license holder could set that value and people could browse the available licenses and check out the longest. That's just details though.

Now, is there an advantage to owning the "real" CD? Of course, because you could always do a "license reclaim" and withdraw your donations from the library, either singly or en masse, and revert to a more selfish non-loaning aspect. No biggie, that's what you paid for. All donations to the superlibrary would be voluntary (although, like any library, it could have a budget to buy some stuff itself to stock its own shelves for the borrowing public).

Now, would anyone USE such a library? I sure would! I like to listen to (and read, and watch) fairly non mainstream stuff, which would be less likely to not be available. (Of course, that's also stuff less likely to be IN the library too, but at least some of it would). I'd get massive bandwidth (go tax dollars!) and whatever quality I wanted (go tax dollars!), and I wouldn't need to allocate any physical storage space and very little disk space. In effect, that remote system would act like a sluggish remote hard drive. And it would be entirely legal.

Not got enough money for the new Live Phish Volume? No biggie, check the library. Yay, it's there, woohoo, poor people checking out stuff they like from the library!

And it could be specified in wills that all your licenses get donated to the superlibrary, for the future enrichment of mankind. Like, add that to the back of drivers' licenses and stuff. "You can have my heart, eyeballs, testicales, and all my licenses for music, movies and books go to the superlibrary."

I have 10,000 *legal* songs I have purchased. I can listen to, at any one time, ONE SONG. So I can, at BEST, make 0.01 percent efficient use of what I have paid for. Why should I ONLY be able to loan the stuff to others face-to-face and not over a network? Strong DRM could solve that problem and then we'd go from being extremely inefficient with our use of licenses to massively efficient, just like that. It would change the world. And it would be moral, ethical, legal, fast, with top-notch quality, no fakes, no bleeps or blips.

True, the RIAA (and MPAA, and book publishers) might try to fight this idea legally. They probably would. But it's such a logical extension of what we already do that it WOULD get passed, if we can cross the technological hurdle that ensures it IS a loan and not a copy.

[shawners]

i could EASILy solve the problem..ALL RECORDINg companies have a software that enables you to download all the songs ever with that recording company, and it tells you before you download. SONG LENGTH and the cd length to make a burn copy, Say Five dollars per cd.. Out of 18 tracks, although after burned on the cd, you can still encode the cd and put on a p2p site enabling people to get your legaly purchased cd.. so its a system devoloped on a trust.

[Ken17625]

Ok, call me a troll because I stirred up some dissent.

At least you admit to it. When you used the word "stirred", you gave yourself away.

If you support musicians, don't share their music. Flattery is one thing. Paying my rent and feeding my baby is another.

Actually, at $17.99 for a compact disc, artists deserve nothing.

I know nothing about you, or what your music is (what your charging, etc...), but honestly, I don't care. Your music will stand on it's own merits. If it's good and reasonably priced (unlike RIAA affiliated music) then people like me will buy it. How do I know this? Artists who I think are "good" (not the occasinal radio single/one-hit-wonder. It takes a lot to make it onto my "good" list) I usually BUY. Yes thats right, I BUY music (on rare occasions these days due to an overwhelming influx of crap).


So if someone is pirating your music, don't come crying to people who most likely never heard of you.

In the words of Arnold S...........................Stop whining.

[jonnymnemonic]

Once strong DRM can reliably insure a loan does not become a copy, legal precedent is all on our side. Loaning of what you have purchased has been an established part of economics for centuries or longer. The RIAA and MPAA and book publishers - all of them have come right out and SAID that they have no problem whatsoever with LOANING, but that it is COPYING that is the problem.

They can't try to assert property values on digital media and ignore the loaning aspect. If they can sell you a product over a network legally in digital form, there is no valid reason that people should not be able to loan it as well, once is is verifiably a loan.

It WOULD be interesting to see what arguments they would make against the concept. We were for loaning, but now we are not? Try to make loaning illegal, so property becomes non-transferable? (Bye bye used car lots, pawn shops, e-bay, and a zillion other things.) It would be extremely difficult for them to argue against loaning when hundreds of years of law and their own words support the idea.

Yes, it would certainly change all the relevant industries. Perhaps they'd simply compensate by offering two different types of licenses, non-transferrable ones (tied to a specific person indefinitely and unchangeably) and sell those cheap, but transferrable licenses...kapow, a thousand times the price?

I dunno, but strong DRM is on the way, and it's going to get interesting (okay, MORE interesting) when it arrives. To be sure, there are some sucky things about DRM, but like I said, it's really a two-edged sword. There's some real nice potential there for the consumer too.

[Winphuk]

Don't ban these people, just ignore them.
If they get no attention they'll give up and go away.
Definetly don't debate with them. They came here with their minds made up. You won't convert them to file sharing.