or the lack there of:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/3117505.stm

"Joe Pacheco" wrote in message
om...
or the lack there of:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and foremost. Unauthorized
trading of music ignores the fact that the owners of the songs do not want
them traded. P2P fans, on the other hand, believe that "music" is a
religion.

John

Actually the new tidbit in this article was that basically PtP file-swapping
is probably not as responsible for the year's sales drop-off as much as
hardcopy bootlegs which has gotten increasingly out of control.

Mike Rivers wrote in message
news:znr1060091409k@trad...

In article
writes:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and foremost.
Unauthorized
trading of music ignores the fact that the owners of the songs do not
want
them traded.

No, sales is definitely not a red herring. It's what it's all about.
It's not the back room aspiring songwriter who knows that he doesn't
have a chance of ever getting a label deal who wants to protect his
intellectual property. He's really happy to have as many people as
possible hear his songs. Maybe one of them will be a record executive.

It's those who are concerned with not making sale of the product in
which they've invested who are raising a fuss about sharing songs as
files over the Internet.

Disclaimers: I didn't read the referenced article. I figured that it
didn't have anything new to say. Few of them do. Also, recognize that
my statement about the songwriter wanting people to hear his songs by
any means is a generalization. You may be a songwriter who would
rather not have anyone hear your music if they don't pay for it.
It's easy to find an exception to a generalization. It's difficult to
find a majority of exceptions, so don't argue your case based on your
own opinion.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

John LeBlanc wrote:
"Joe Pacheco" wrote in message
om...

or the lack there of:


Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and foremost. Unauthorized
trading of music ignores the fact that the owners of the songs do not want
them traded. P2P fans, on the other hand, believe that "music" is a
religion.

John



This conflation of property ownership and copyright protection is really
starting to irritate me. I think it's important to appreciate the
difference between owning a car and owning a copyright. They are not
the same thing, legally or practically, no matter how much a person
bloviates about "intellectual property". The principle of a copyright
is pretty simple: you get a temporary, government enforced right to
be the sole "copier" of your intellectual products. After a while, the
material is released to the public domain so other people can creatively
use your work to make new products. Please appreciate how different
this is from buying a house!

And if you say, well, that sucks, I should own my song forever like I
own my house, think through the consequences of this: artistic and
intellectual development depends on building from past knowledge, so
"permanent" copyrights would stifle innovation in both sciences and
arts. In other words, if we treat this generation's intellectual
work as sacrosanct "property", our children and grandchildren will
suffer.

Lawrence Lessig has written quite a bit about this, if you're interested
in actually understanding the copyright debate rather than taking
potshots at P2P fans.

Miles

Here we go again g...

The record majors (through the representation of the RIAA), are
bringing sales into the argument, and are making it the sticking
point. This article, for the first time (as I can see it, and I've
been trying to follow this debate as best as I can), introduces a
perspective backed with hard data that counters the RIAA more
effectively than any other article/opinion/data that I've seen/read.
I've been trying to wrap my head around this whole thing since it
started several years ago. And the argument that intellectual
property rights is the only issue here is also ignoring a new
technology's potential to benefit and protect that same intellectual
property right. The RIAA/record companies, by attacking and suing the
users of these networks, will only alienate and distance the listener
(many if not most of them are young enough where their opinions of the
record companies will be formed by these acts alone). Instead of
embracing a technology in some capacity at all, they are attacking the
users of the technology. As long as music is digital, it will
_always_ be available "illegally": digital technology is a closed
system, and fundamental mathematical laws/arguments can prove and back
up the assertion that _any_ code/encryption scheme can be broken...

So why don't the majors consider ways of taking advantage of p2p?
It's easier to litigate, than to invest in a public relations campaign
that might persuade the users of such networks that their actions are
immoral and unethical. It's easier to load the courts with subpenas
(sp) than to by air time, have road shows at high schools, have some
of these same major artists participate in an educational campaign,
where they engage the users, instead of distance them...

I can't figure it out... my gut feeling is that when all the dust has
settled, the majors will still be busting the artists' balls as they
always have, raking it all in like they always have (in terms of
percentage), and maintained control of the product, like they always
have, but still suffer reduced sales, because of an alienated
audience...

There's always the live show, though!

Angelo



"John LeBlanc" wrote in message ...
"Joe Pacheco" wrote in message
om...
or the lack there of:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and foremost. Unauthorized
trading of music ignores the fact that the owners of the songs do not want
them traded. P2P fans, on the other hand, believe that "music" is a
religion.

John

"Miles Jackson" wrote in message
ink.net...

The principle of a copyright
is pretty simple: you get a temporary, government enforced right to
be the sole "copier" of your intellectual products. After a while, the
material is released to the public domain so other people can creatively
use your work to make new products.

A song released this morning will be uploaded and shared on Kazaa tonight.
Are you suggesting the length of time a copyright allows an owner control
should be lessened to twelve hours?

The fact is, most every song being traded is well within the copyright
protection period, so I'm not sure why you bring this up as an argument.

John

(Mike Rivers) wrote in news:znr1060091409k@trad:

It's not the back room aspiring songwriter who knows that he doesn't
have a chance of ever getting a label deal who wants to protect his
intellectual property. He's really happy to have as many people as
possible hear his songs. Maybe one of them will be a record executive.

Yet another Mike Rivers put-down to aspiring musicians, producers and
songwriters. New music has come from many "back rooms" and basements from
Herb Alpert to RAP.

It's those who are concerned with not making sale of the product in
which they've invested who are raising a fuss about sharing songs as
files over the Internet.

I agree, but anyone who records makes an investment, whether of
commercial success or not. These are interesting times; and distribution
methods are simply changing. Radio was once thought a threat to record
sales, as was the player piano to sheet music. The one thing that has
never changed is intellectual property rights. This IS the core issue in
discussing file sharing. And what may be a loss for some investors will
most likely provide opportunities for others.

There are plenty of songs & recordings that never made money for the
songwriter or record company in their day, only to be used at a later
date for commercial uses via the public domain. Think of any artist that
covers a public domain song and books like "playing blues guitar" by
Steve Grossman.

You consistently seem to put forth the proposition that the plethora of
music created by "the huge untalented masses" is a bad thing. Well it
sells equipment, does it not? And it provides modest means for others to
write reviews about that equipment, no? You might want to consider where
your bread is buttered first, before you keep making your generalized
swipes at back room aspiring songwriters. They are people that simply
wish to write and record their music and perhaps, if lucky, find
potential markets for that same music. Is this any different from an
aspiring writer, actor, gear manufacturer, accountant, lawyer, and
recording engineer?

Disclaimers: I didn't read the referenced article. I figured that it
didn't have anything new to say. Few of them do. Also, recognize that
my statement about the songwriter wanting people to hear his songs by
any means is a generalization. You may be a songwriter who would
rather not have anyone hear your music if they don't pay for it.
It's easy to find an exception to a generalization. It's difficult to
find a majority of exceptions, so don't argue your case based on your
own opinion.

Why make disclaimers at all? Why comment then, if for no other reason
than to self-agrandise? Can we get anymore negative and disillusioned?
Put another way, failure is not itself a reason not to strive to achieve.
Here's a fact that's not opinion: With every failure Edison encountered,
I'm sure he still put forth the effort to file for the patent, thereby
protecting his intellectual property, even if it never saw the light of
day.

"DavidMackBlauvelt" wrote in message 54.204...

[deletions]

: Here's a fact that's not opinion: With every failure Edison encountered,
: I'm sure he still put forth the effort to file for the patent, thereby
: protecting his intellectual property, even if it never saw the light of
: day.

And file for patents he did with great frequency. Including
filing for patents on ideas to which he did not have rights.
Just a thought...

=Bob=
bob -at- threestrands -dot- com

In article writes:

Actually the new tidbit in this article was that basically PtP file-swapping
is probably not as responsible for the year's sales drop-off as much as
hardcopy bootlegs which has gotten increasingly out of control.

Are they talking world-wide, or US only? I know that bootleg disks are
pretty common in Asia, but I don't know how prevalent there are in the
US.

The PtP people have argued forever that file swapping doesn't reduce
sales. What reduces sales is making albums that people don't want to
buy.

If initially all the cuts on an album were available as singles,
they'd find out what people wanted to buy and discontinue the ones
that weren't selling, then everyone would be happy except the
songwriting/publishing chain. They wouldn't get the royalties on the
songs that they couldn't otherwise sell unless people were forced to
buy them as part of an album.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

So why don't the majors consider ways of taking advantage of p2p?

Because it's peer to peer, not user-to-seller. Apple iTunes works
because everyone who (legally) gets a tune from them pays
appropriately. But when their anti-copy tools are cracked (and I
assume they already are) and people start sharing the songs p2p, no
more payments to the rightful owners. In short, there's no way to
police it and assure that every listener pays for his copy.

It's easier to litigate, than to invest in a public relations campaign
that might persuade the users of such networks that their actions are
immoral and unethical.

Not only that, but in the end, it will probably be more effective. I
suspect that it's easier for a network host to detect that a music
file is being transferred and simply abort the transfer than it is for
them to find out who owns the copyrights, collect the toll in order to
let the train pass, and send the money where it belongs. The
technology to send files is simple. The technology to block
transmission of certain files and allow others is a little more
difficult but possible, at least for a few seconds until the
participants figure out what's happening and defetat the block.
Commerce with no designated middleman is very difficult.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article . net writes:

bloviates about "intellectual property". The principle of a copyright
is pretty simple: you get a temporary, government enforced right to
be the sole "copier" of your intellectual products. After a while, the
material is released to the public domain so other people can creatively
use your work to make new products.

And if you say, well, that sucks, I should own my song forever like I
own my house, think through the consequences of this: artistic and
intellectual development depends on building from past knowledge, so
"permanent" copyrights would stifle innovation in both sciences and
arts.

Artistic development might build on the melody of a song protected by
copyright, or a harmony, or a rhythm, or even a phrase of lyrics.
People who want to use a copyright work for that purpose generally
have no problem buying a copy of their own. And for those who want to
use copyright material legitimately (to build upon for their own work)
there's the compulsory license. It's not free, but if you're going to
make some money on the song you write, you don't mind sharing that
with the one who gave you the idea.

Artistic development doesn't result from copying a song and listening
to it for your enjoyment. That's the difference.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article znr1060112802k@trad, Mike Rivers wrote:
In article writes:

Actually the new tidbit in this article was that basically PtP file-swapping
is probably not as responsible for the year's sales drop-off as much as
hardcopy bootlegs which has gotten increasingly out of control.

Are they talking world-wide, or US only? I know that bootleg disks are
pretty common in Asia, but I don't know how prevalent there are in the
US.

I have never seen them in the US at all. I've seen kids making bootleg
copies on CD-R drives for their friends, but I have never seen a commercial
bootleg disc here in the US.

You go to many Asian countries and there are stalls on street corners
selling very obviously bootlegged copies, and the governments don't seem
to care. But this has been going on since the LP era, and it's not as
if it has recently become much worse. Used to be there were whole plants
in Hong Kong that did nothing but electroplate commercial pressings and
stamp out noisy copies of them.
--scott
--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

DavidMackBlauvelt wrote in
54.204:

one thing that has never changed is intellectual property rights.

Odd statemnts. Our societies changes constantly, so of course legal and
moral intellectual property rights also changes.


About legal rights:

The laws and agreements regulating intellectual property rights has changed
constantly since they were first created (copyright in UK 10 April 1710,
patents long before that).

They're still changing.
You can patent a lot more stuff today in the US than you could just a few
years ago (peanutbutter+jelly sandwiches for example). The EU are currently
working on new patent regulations as well. Both copyrights and patents are
in effect longer and longer. Don't remember what they started with in the
UK, but I have a vague recollection copyright was limted to 15 years or so.


About moral rights:

Those are also changing constantly. What most people today take for granted
when it comes to patents would have been scorned upon in earlier times.
Today all new invetions are pattented. A couple of hundred years ago they
weren't, and inventions were allways copied by others. People invented then
and invent today. The economics and logistics are of course very different
though.

Moral rights and obligations wrt published works of literature, music, etc
have of course also changed. It used to be that the important aspect was
that noone took credit for someone elses work. The UK actually had the
Licensing Act 1662, before the Copyright Act, wich was meant to protect an
uthors right to get credit for his/her work. Of course credit is still
important, but the economical aspects have grown to be very important
today.


Everything changes, including intellectual property rights.

Regards
/Jonas

"John LeBlanc" wrote in
:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring.

The most used argument the record companies put forth is sales. For someone
disputing the record companies side of the issue, disputing their main
argument seems natural.

What I found interesting in the article wasn't about p2p at all though. It
was the fact that if you include pirate CDs in the figures, sales are
actually getting higher and higher. There's a *lot* of records sold in
countries where pirated CDs are common.

This shows that people are willing to buy records, at much lower prices.
Now, I don't say that the record companies should therefore lower the price
down to the price for a pirate CD ($4 was one example). I simply don't know
how many unit's they'd have to sell at that low price to get a decent
profit.

This issue is intellectual property rights of ownership, first and
foremost.

It should be, but that's not what the companies are arguing.

Of course, to the companies the issue of sales is important in court. It's
what they base their calculation for damages on.

The reason the companies are visibly targeting p2p rather than the big time
pirates (those who make a good profit on selling pirate CDs) doesn't have
with legal or moral rights to do. It's simply because the big time pirates
work in countries where it's harder for the record companies to do
something about it (and in the western world they can actually leave
handling big time CD pirates to the police).

P2P fans, on the other hand, believe
that "music" is a religion.

Here you lost me...

Regards
/Jonas

In article 04 writes:

Yet another Mike Rivers put-down to aspiring musicians, producers and
songwriters. New music has come from many "back rooms" and basements from
Herb Alpert to RAP.

Awwwww, did I hurt your widdle feewings? Do you really think that
everyone playing with music thinks he's the next great thing? Every
hear of a hobby? Remember what I say about generalizations. You can
always contradict them and be right. Does that make you feel good? All
I know is that I hear a whole lot more bad music (and not a lot more
good) music today than I did 40 years ago - because there IS more
music, and I can only listen to so much music. Since I don't always
get to select what I hear, the probability that I'll hear more bad
music is greater than it was.

I agree, but anyone who records makes an investment, whether of
commercial success or not.

But not everyone who makes an investment expects a return on that
investment. I take it you record your music. Are you making your
investment back? If not, what would it take to do that? Do you have
what it takes, or are you doing it because you like it and you realize
that sometimes you need to pay to do things that you like?

There are plenty of songs & recordings that never made money for the
songwriter or record company in their day, only to be used at a later
date for commercial uses via the public domain. Think of any artist that
covers a public domain song and books like "playing blues guitar" by
Steve Grossman.

He might be making money by performing that song, but he's not making
money because he wrote it. (at least I hope not) But performing and
songwriting are different things.

You consistently seem to put forth the proposition that the plethora of
music created by "the huge untalented masses" is a bad thing.

That's your perception and you're free to interpret it that way.
However I'll say that having a large amount of music in the pool means
that the probability of someone diving in and finding a gem is getting
smaller. This can't be good for the industry in general even though
there may still be about the same number of individual hits.

Well it
sells equipment, does it not?

Yes, and it keeps people off the streets, too. That's a good thing.

And it provides modest means for others to
write reviews about that equipment, no? You might want to consider where
your bread is buttered first, before you keep making your generalized
swipes at back room aspiring songwriters.

HAH!!!! If I had to live off what I make by reviewing equipment, I'd
start writing songs. I think you'd better leave irrelevant insults out
of this and keep your insults relevant to me and the topic.

They are people that simply
wish to write and record their music and perhaps, if lucky, find
potential markets for that same music. Is this any different from an
aspiring writer, actor, gear manufacturer, accountant, lawyer, and
recording engineer?

Yes, and you said it yourself. "If lucky." A good accountant, lawyer,
or engineer can find a potential market based on his skill, and they
have a reasonably good chance of doing so because:

- The market isn't all that full of job seekers (though our current
administration is working on that)
- They're judged by a potential employer, not everyone who might
"if lucky" run into their music.

I have heard quite a few "new" artists that I like, but not surprisingly
they have been very serious about their career development. They
don't record in their spare time, they record when they have songs
and they get it done because they don't have any other distractions.
They tour. They write. They get gigs. They publicize themselves. They
go on the radio. They don't have time for another day job. It's their
life. This is a little different from someone who makes music as a
hobby (no matter how serious he is or how much money he's spent
on recording gear and instruments) and hopes to get lucky some
day.

I think that if you were to think about commercial songwriters who
work for publishing companies, you'd find people with songwriting
talent who are selling their product consistently and are doing what
they enjoy with music. But there aren't many who are willing to give
up the security of their day jobs to give it all to music. You don't
find too many part time accountants and engineers, unless, like me,
they've retired from another career and now can afford to work only
part time.

Why make disclaimers at all? Why comment then, if for no other reason
than to self-agrandise?

Becuase I have some knowledge of the industry and an opinion on the
subject, unlike you who just chooses to attack me without making any
on-topic points.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

I've said it before & I'll say it again- It ain't p2p, it's the totally
****ed up condition of fm radio, thanks to the fcc's corporate asskissing.
I don't buy new cd's(almost)(nor do I download) because I NEVER HEAR ANY NEW
ARTISTS on the damn radio, thanks to Klear Khannel Kommunications

You live in the wrong place (and I do, too, as do most people in the
US now), but there are radio stations that do play new artists. When I
was living in Seattle, I listened to KEXP almost all the time. Now I
listen to them over the Internet. It sounds like crap, but I hear a
lot of music that I don't hear on local FM stations, and I even like
some of it. There are plenty of independent and college radio stations
that don't play the deadly CC playlists, but they're hard to find and
many of them, unfortunately (thanks to The Law) can't afford to stream
their programming on the Internet. To me, this is the alternate to
radio, and hopefully it'll get better before it falls into the wrong
hands.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

I have never seen them in the US at all. I've seen kids making bootleg
copies on CD-R drives for their friends, but I have never seen a commercial
bootleg disc here in the US.

I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the CDs at the Indian and Latino
grocery stores around here are bootlegs, but they're bootlegs of
Indian or Latin artists on labels outside the US. I don't think the
RIAA pays them much mind, though the RIAI might.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

"Carey Carlan" wrote in message
. 10
"Arny Krueger" wrote in news:X5-
:

"kooch" wrote in message

Actually the new tidbit in this article was that basically PtP
file-swapping is probably not as responsible for the year's sales
drop-off as much as hardcopy bootlegs which has gotten increasingly
out of control.

Not mentioned are all the music-related video DVDs that are being
sold.

Which are often cheaper than the related CD's.

Right and ironic, no?

I think sales volumes might have something to do with that...

....and that really makes the RIAA's whining about dropping CD sales volumes
look weird.

Jonas Eckerman wrote in
. 1:

Everything changes, including intellectual property rights.

Regards
/Jonas

I thought I was saying that a discussion of file sharing by it's very
nature includes the concept of intellectual property rights, changing or
not. Mike put out the idea that it is not so much an issue about
intellectual property rights as much as it is an issue of -- hell I don't
know what he really meant.

"John LeBlanc" wrote in message news:2o2cnQGP

What I mean is I run across lots and lots of P2P/unauthorized downloaders
who put forth the argument that Music belongs to The People in the same way
that religion belongs to The People. I could just as easily substitued "air"
for "religion" but generally people aren't as possessive of their air as
they are their religion.

Do you know what is the biggest selling book of all time? The Bible. Do you
know what is the most stolen book of all time? The Bible. There are still
lots of people who don't believe the Word of God should not be sold.
Likewise, there are -- evidently -- lots of people who believe Music
shouldn't be sold.

And then there's the subset of those people who believe music should be
sold, but for less money. (Say, $4 a copy.) They justify stealing a (****ty)
copy of a CD because they don't believe The Man is selling the CD at a
reasonable price. The argument goes that if The Man lowers his price, people
will buy more CDs. No ****. But the price is what the price is. Don't like
it? Don't buy it.

Here in the USA, when a company prices his goods or services out of the
market's range, people stop buying. With P2P, though, they can stop buying
and still acquire the goods by stealing a copy. Color me silly, but I think
that's wrong. I still believe the copyright owner has the final say in how
his work is distributed -- or not distributed.

People who believe music should be free should feel free to make all the
music they want.

The problem with all this is that were the copyright law as the RIAA
is defending it enforced across the board, EVERYONE would go down. Who
here hasn't made a mix tape and given it to a friend? Isn't that the
same, albeit slower, thing as p2p? It's important to realize that the
RIAA is using a law designed to protect intellectual property from
being copied, as in "I take your notes and chords and structure and
sell it as my own for profit", and applying it to people trading a
xerox "copy". They're not the same. Does the value of a Picasso go
down because kids are trading a low-resolution xerox of the painting?
Did the sales of books go down when xerox machines came around? What
about movies, after the vcr?

Sales are down because major label music sucks. And as soon as the
RIAA figures out a way to control p2p and maximize profits from it,
they'll do the same thing with the same ****ty mp3's and charge you a
subscription fee, while the artist will probably receive a lesser
royalty. They did this with record clubs, this'll be the new record
club. I've got no ****ing sympathy whatsoever for the RIAA. Their only
concern is their own profit, NOT the artist.

(Mike Rivers) wrote in
news:znr1060123380k@trad:

Awwwww, did I hurt your widdle feewings? Do you really think
that everyone playing with music thinks he's the next great thing?

Hey I enjoy many of your posts, and I appreciate the things you
have spelled out for me and others, but you seem to be morphing
into the Saturday Night Live Grumpy Old Man caricature daily--
"while back in my day we didn't have bottled water, we drank it
dirty and liked it!"

If responding to your swipe at songwriters was perceived as a
personal attack, then I apologize.

But this nonsense about aspiring songwriters not caring about
protecting their own publishing seems to be a recurring theme in
your thinking, and I don't really understand where you are going
with it.

As for everyone thinking that they might be the next great thing,
doesn't our current culture encourage this? The picture of the
kid with a girl on his shoulder and cash in his hand standing next
to a DAW comes to mind. American idol shows and the like. Maybe
the consumer doesn't really want a "big thing." Maybe that
econimic model has been played out. But it apparently still works
when marketing prosumer studio gear.

You seem to be saying that the problem is that so much music today
is self-published, self-recorded, and self-marketed. I don't
really see why that is a problem?

All I know is that I hear a whole lot more bad music (and not a
lot more good) music today than I did 40 years ago - because there
IS more music, and I can only listen to so much music. Since I
don't always get to select what I hear, the probability that I'll
hear more bad music is greater than it was.

The fragmentation of music genres, while perhaps frustrating to
radio consolidation and large record companies, seems to be a fact
of life. I think that this is a positive thing. If one has to dig
a little deeper to find something good, why is that bad?

But not everyone who makes an investment expects a return on
that investment. I take it you record your music. Are you making
your investment back? If not, what would it take to do that?

Isn't that what we are all trying to figure out? grin

However I'll say that having a large amount of music in the pool
means that the probability of someone diving in and finding a gem
is getting smaller. This can't be good for the industry in general
even thoughthere may still be about the same number of individual
hits.

How exactly is this bad for the industry exactly? If you mean that
finding good music is difficult, then I agree. The probability of
finding good food off the interstate is small as well, but yet the
American palate proves that the food industry knows exactly what
it is doing. Maybe we as a culture are expecting more from the
homogenous offerings of the current hit machine, maybe not.

HAH!!!! If I had to live off what I make by reviewing equipment,
I'd start writing songs. I think you'd better leave irrelevant
insults out of this and keep your insults relevant to me and the
topic.

That's funny.

I have heard quite a few "new" artists that I like, but not
surprisingly they have been very serious about their career
development. They don't record in their spare time, they record
when they have songs and they get it done because they don't have
any other distractions. They tour. They write. They get gigs. They
publicize themselves. They go on the radio. They don't have time
for another day job. It's their life. This is a little different
from someone who makes music as a hobby (no matter how serious he
is or how much money he's spent on recording gear and instruments)
and hopes to get lucky some day.

I agree with that. Obviously the gear manufacturing business
doesn't market to these people.

I think that if you were to think about commercial songwriters
who work for publishing companies, you'd find people with
songwriting talent who are selling their product consistently and
are doing what they enjoy with music. But there aren't many who
are willing to give up the security of their day jobs to give it
all to music. You don't find too many part time accountants and
engineers, unless, like me, they've retired from another career
and now can afford to work only part time.

True. There seems to be lots of part-time engineers out there
though.

Becuase I have some knowledge of the industry and an opinion on
the subject, unlike you who just chooses to attack me without
making any on-topic points.

Again no attack intended. But what exactly is off topic by saying
that intellectual property rights are at the heart of file sharing
issues? You brought in aspiring songwriters as a point of topic.
I prodded you on your disclaimer about contradictions and
generalizations because apparently you wanted someone to -- I'm
sorry Mike, you trolled, I bit.

Where's Jurlgard when you need him?

In article writes:

The problem with all this is that were the copyright law as the RIAA
is defending it enforced across the board, EVERYONE would go down. Who
here hasn't made a mix tape and given it to a friend? Isn't that the
same, albeit slower, thing as p2p?

Sonny, possibly even before you were born, they were worried about
kids recording their records on to cassette and trading cassettes with
their friends at school. This has always been a concern. It got to be
a bigger concern with the advent of digital recording because not only
could you make a copy, you could make a 'perfect clone' that would
sound every bit as good as the original. But you still had to hand
someone a copy on physical media, so at least they could put a royalty
tax on the media and recoup some money that way. Of course it's
unfair. There are other reasons to buy a blank cassette than to make
a copy of someone else's property, but the industry decided (and they
were probably correct) that this was the primary application for
blanks, so they got their tax.

Does the value of a Picasso go
down because kids are trading a low-resolution xerox of the painting?

No, but then Picasso got paid only once for a painting. He didn't get
a royalty check every time there was an exhibition of his artwork, or
every time that painting was sold to another buyer, so he's not losing
out when the museum puts a print of his picture in a catalog. These
days, I'll bet they do pay royalties for this sort of usage, however
it's entirely a different model than we use for music.

Sales are down because major label music sucks.

Not all of it, but major labels are only interested in selling one
package at one price. And in fact, so are independents and private
labels too. Buy a major label CD in a big store and it'll cost you $15
or so. Buy a CD off the stage from your neighborhood folk singer and
it'll cost you $15. Each CD has 15 or so songs on it. You may like 10
out of the 15 songs on the folksinger's CD and only two on the major
artist's CD, but that's just you. Somebody else might like all of the
major CD and wonder why they're only playing one song from it on the
radio. There's all kinds of preferences.

But if they gave you the opportunity to pick what you wanted to listen
to and not pay for the rest (that they already paid for), they
wouldn't be making tons of money.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article 05 writes:

But this nonsense about aspiring songwriters not caring about
protecting their own publishing seems to be a recurring theme in
your thinking, and I don't really understand where you are going
with it.

You misunderstood (or maybe I didn't say enough). It's not that they
don't care about protecting their work, it's that at a certain stage
in their career, spreading around their name, their songs, and their
talent as a writer is more important than keeping something tucked
away that will make them a lot of money one day. Their work is
copyright as soon as it's fixed in a tangible media, and by
registering that copyright, they have secured the rights to sue anyone
for infringement. But until they're up into the tens of thousands of
p2p trads, they wouldn't be making any money anyway, so it's worth
more to have people talking about them. In essence, it's payment for
publicity.

Eventually it has to stop when they prove that they have something of
value, but until then, the publicity may be more important than a few
bucks in royalties. When Britney or Sheryl or Garth picks up one of
those songs, you bet they'll find out who the publisher is and pay for
it - more like try to buy the song than pay royalties, but that's up
to their lawyers.

As for everyone thinking that they might be the next great thing,
doesn't our current culture encourage this?

I don't think that our culture encourages it, but the media certainly
does. But people grow up.

You seem to be saying that the problem is that so much music today
is self-published, self-recorded, and self-marketed. I don't
really see why that is a problem?

If that's as far as it goes, no problem. But the average listener
can't possibly filter through all of the available material to find
something he likes. One of the things that we had back when the only
way to get a recording out to the public was to either spend a lot of
your own money (which a few did, but not many) or be on a real record
label. The label acted as a filter and only signed artists that they
thought they could sell. Not to say that a different label couldn't
sell the other artists - you don't find the same kind of artists on
Sony as you do on Alligator - but the result was that instead of
having to deal with 10,000 new recordings a week, we had maybe 500 in
a year. Much more manageable for the buyer, and less temptation to not
pay for something because we might not like it. Today you cam make a
CD with a couple of hundred bucks and things you have lying aroudn the
house, not a month's salary, so yeah, everybody's doing it. And the
competition for the real money is fierce, but there's plenty of
material for people to steal.

The fragmentation of music genres, while perhaps frustrating to
radio consolidation and large record companies, seems to be a fact
of life. I think that this is a positive thing. If one has to dig
a little deeper to find something good, why is that bad?

If it was only a little deeper, it wouldn't be so bad, but it's a lot
deeper, and then you try to limit yourself so there's a whole lot that
you DON'T hear, and you don't have someone telling you "Hey, listen to
this band" because everybody is listening to a different band.

However I'll say that having a large amount of music in the pool
means that the probability of someone diving in and finding a gem
is getting smaller. This can't be good for the industry in general

How exactly is this bad for the industry exactly? If you mean that
finding good music is difficult, then I agree.

More than that. Instead of a relatively few people making a lot of
money, you have a whole lot of people making just a little money.
There may be the same amount of money being made, but there won't be
any incentive to invest and improve. If you were paying for your
studio gear from your music sales, and you only sold 6 CDs a month,
how many new microphones would you be able to buy? And if Paul
McCartney only sold 6 CDs a month, how many Rolls Royces would HE be
able to buy? But if you sold 50,000 a month, then you'd have a lot
more incentive to make another, hopefully even better CD and start
working on it right now.

True. There seems to be lots of part-time engineers out there
though.

They used to be full-time before they got laid off, though. But
singers don't get laid off, they just don't get gigs.

But what exactly is off topic by saying
that intellectual property rights are at the heart of file sharing
issues?

Nothing, but that isn't how you started out ranting at me.

You brought in aspiring songwriters as a point of topic.
I prodded you on your disclaimer about contradictions and
generalizations because apparently you wanted someone to -- I'm
sorry Mike, you trolled, I bit.

I just figured that anyone who responded wouldn't be worth responding
to. I took the bait.


--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

(Mike Rivers) wrote in news:znr1060203310k@trad:

snip of stuff I mostly agree with

More than that. Instead of a relatively few people making a lot of
money, you have a whole lot of people making just a little money.

If even that. I know from personal experience that you got to play tough
and often just to command $300 in a club (for everyone)after making a
regional name for yourself.

Maybe it was better to have a label filtering talent, but who has took
leadership in this area? crickets chirping The serious lack of new
artist and market developements is truly astonishing. One thing that
article did point out correctly IMO is that the RIAA members undoubtably
have rested on there laurels, relying on people updating their collection
to CD's.

They used to be full-time before they got laid off, though. But
singers don't get laid off, they just don't get gigs.

So true, but that's why so many musicians are going DIY for better or
worse (with recording) because its no worse than gigs that don't pay,
audiences that don't see live music, and majors that want everyone to fit
the same mold. Like musicians, most engineers I've met and chatted with
stick with it because, at the core, they do it because they love it.

that isn't how you started out ranting at me.

Well I only save my rants for people I respect. I guess it just seems
like some blame the musicians that bothered to learn an instrument in the
first place. I'll tell you this, the folks that DJ for weddings etc. have
burned galore and with inpunity. End rant

Best,

Dave Blauvelt

wrote:

Their only
concern is their own profit, NOT the artist.

With proper substution for the relevant interests you have
just defined all commerce as it is universally practiced.
The entire economic system has this local concern for
maximum profit as an underlying fundamental premise at every
level. What is it that distinguishes music
creation/production/marketing and makes the same, universal,
model so onerous in it's case?

The only thing that really distinguishes it is that
technology has rather suddenly provided the good citizen
with a simple way to confound the mechanisms which provide
protection from theft in other markets (and previously
provided it in this one) and in the process exposed the
weakness of his ethics. The endless rationalization and
justification of the behaviors that weakness has wrought
just remind me that things subject to such argument are
rarely either rational or just.


Bob
--

"Things should be described as simply as possible, but no
simpler."

A. Einstein

I think the real points of the article are that, A) the RIAA isn't pursuing
their intellectual property rights infringers in the correct way, such as
the SPA did for corporations buying one copy of Windows and spreading it out
amongst an entire corporate infrastructure, and B) the majors simply aren't
combatting the KNOWN winners of the teen's dollars, which is simply
alternative methods of entertainment.

An example would be the "singles" market, which is virtually non-existant,
but singles are the only way the albums are promoted. However, in our young
people's minds today, and probably more true than not, is that there's only
one good song on the album anyway, and that's the single. Instant Catch-22.

Now I don't know what the exact figures might be, but in the article they
alluded to a figure somewhere around 39,000 new products hit the shelves in
2001 and that dropped to 27,000 in 2002. Well, that's simply too much
product, mostly of questionable taste, and again we're talking about banking
on a few. Do we need 39,000 new products put on the shelves?

Somewhere along the line, and I realize it's a business, but still,
somewhere these guys got mixed up about what they were supposed to be doing
for their stockholders AND clients and simply leaned towards the
stockholders. Then they set the bar so ****ing high with deals like
Prince's and Madonna's and Michael Jackson's that they had painted
themselves into corners with dollar signs. Now everybody wants the 10s of
millions, and while the big dollar groups can't seem to get it up anymore,
monetarily, good artists with good songs, like Joan Osborne, had to take the
mantle on themselves to get their next product done, when their previous
product actually made money for the majors.

Someone is obviously not paying attention and just as obviously that someone
is within the industry that's pointing fingers at everyone else. The bottom
line is that ART is a bad bottom line investment when ART is removed from
the process.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

301-585-4681




"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1060091409k@trad...

In article
writes:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and foremost.
Unauthorized
trading of music ignores the fact that the owners of the songs do not
want
them traded.

No, sales is definitely not a red herring. It's what it's all about.
It's not the back room aspiring songwriter who knows that he doesn't
have a chance of ever getting a label deal who wants to protect his
intellectual property. He's really happy to have as many people as
possible hear his songs. Maybe one of them will be a record executive.

It's those who are concerned with not making sale of the product in
which they've invested who are raising a fuss about sharing songs as
files over the Internet.

Disclaimers: I didn't read the referenced article. I figured that it
didn't have anything new to say. Few of them do. Also, recognize that
my statement about the songwriter wanting people to hear his songs by
any means is a generalization. You may be a songwriter who would
rather not have anyone hear your music if they don't pay for it.
It's easy to find an exception to a generalization. It's difficult to
find a majority of exceptions, so don't argue your case based on your
own opinion.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

A strange argument in that one won't make any royalties on albums not sold.
Selling one song a million times brings in far more money than an album that
sells 10,000 copies.

Perhaps it's ADD or the fault of MTV and now the commercials. You have to
have a message AND present it in the shortest time possible to keep the
attention of all those millions of poor children who grew up with Attention
Deficit Disorder and we didn't even know it. And here I thought my kids
were just ignoring me like I did my parents. I had no clue they were SICK.

--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

301-585-4681




"Mike Rivers" wrote in message
news:znr1060112802k@trad...

In article
writes:

Actually the new tidbit in this article was that basically PtP
file-swapping
is probably not as responsible for the year's sales drop-off as much as
hardcopy bootlegs which has gotten increasingly out of control.

Are they talking world-wide, or US only? I know that bootleg disks are
pretty common in Asia, but I don't know how prevalent there are in the
US.

The PtP people have argued forever that file swapping doesn't reduce
sales. What reduces sales is making albums that people don't want to
buy.

If initially all the cuts on an album were available as singles,
they'd find out what people wanted to buy and discontinue the ones
that weren't selling, then everyone would be happy except the
songwriting/publishing chain. They wouldn't get the royalties on the
songs that they couldn't otherwise sell unless people were forced to
buy them as part of an album.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

"Miles Jackson" wrote in message
k.net...


Nowhere did I claim that the copyright law should be 12 hours,

I didn't claim you said so; I asked if you'd prefer a 12 hour period.
Perhaps you should be careful of your own strawman arguments, Miles.

Here is what you said:

The principle of a copyright
is pretty simple: you get a temporary, government enforced right to
be the sole "copier" of your intellectual products. After a while, the
material is released to the public domain so other people can creatively
use your work to make new products.

So I took the inference that you were not satisfied with the length of time
the law provides an owner to control the disposition of his work.

By the time most of what's on Kazaa falls into public domain, Kazaa will be
history. What we have to deal with is today. And today the works are
copyrighted.


What I was trying to point out was that your use of the
term "intellectual property" is vague and misleading. Intellectual
products are not tangible products like guitars or mixing boards,
and it's crucial to appreciate the distinction.

It is now on you to explain how you believe I was vague and misleading,
because all you did was accuse me.

Also, I think you should spend a bit of time with an IP attorney. IP has
value worthy of protection. In my opinion, it deserves the same level of
protection, if not more, than ownership of a guitar or mixing board. Someone
takes your guitar, you get screwed once. A songwriter or performing artist
has the distinction of getting screwed over and over and over again on the
same song.


Again, this is not an argument that justifies P2P. I'm just trying
to point out the danger of the dogmatic protection of intellectual
work for long periods of time.

Take it up with Congress. They wrote the laws which provide the period of
time. I am arguing for the enforcement of legal rights provided by existing
laws.


You just don't seem to see the
problem: if more and more ideas get sucked into more or less
permanent "copyright" status, it stifles innovation in the
sciences and arts, as everybody has to look over their shoulders
wondering if they've infringed on somebody else's copyrights. It
creates a society conducive to ligitation, not creativity. Is
that really the kind of society you want to live in?

Creativity is not stifled by the inability to download music you didn't pay
for. If you cannot see the difference between unauthorized music file
trading, and a courtroom argument over whether Harrison nicked "He's So
Fine", please let's stop this exchange now.

Some of this litigation exists because laws are broken. Laws are broken
because someone values the benefit from breaking the law more than the
concern they have for the penalty of breaking the law. That's a pretty
simple concept.

Many of the complaints I see about the length of copyright seem to come from
people who don't create any works of their own. What they want, however, is
the right to take someone else's work and profit from it. This has nothing
to do with creativity. This has to do with being able to release a movie or
a compilation of songs on CD for sale. Hey, make your own movie, or record
your own CD. That's creativity.

If the issue is about taking a currently protected work and create something
else with it, there are licensing provisions in place today to do that. I
mean, if that's the only way you can be creative -- taking someone else's
song, sample it, and make a "hit" out of it -- well, you can pay someone for
the creativity you need.

It is absurd to suggest an artist's creativity is being stifled because he
cannot take a hit record, sample the bassline and make another hit record
from it without obtaining permission (and licensing) from the own of the
original work. (Calling it a "tribute", btw, isn't a useful legal argument.)

I am dogmatic about enforcement of existing laws. If someone believes an exi
sting law is wrong, there is a process to follow by which you get that law
changed. It certainly isn't easy, and that's good, because a change affects
an awfully large number of people. But breaking the law just because you
disagree with it is still breaking the law. If that's dogmatic, ruff. :-)

Same arguments, different day.

John

DavidMackBlauvelt wrote in
54.202:

I thought I was saying that a discussion of file sharing by it's very
nature includes the concept of intellectual property rights,

Mike put out the idea that it is not so much an issue about
intellectual property rights as much as it is an issue of

The way I read his post I thought he put forth the idea that to RIAA and
the other big players it's an issue of money. I believe that's correct.
They don't really care about intellectual property per se, they only care
about the fact that the regulations helps them make money.

It's not like the big anti-piracy players (Microsoft for example) never
breaks agains intellectual property laws themselves. :-/

Regards
/Jonas

In article writes:

I think the real points of the article are that, A) the RIAA isn't pursuing
their intellectual property rights infringers in the correct way, such as
the SPA did for corporations buying one copy of Windows and spreading it out
amongst an entire corporate infrastructure

That's because this isn't the nature of the problem. They might (and
do) pursue a corporation that tunes in a radio station and plays it
through the corporate background music and paging system. But a
million people connecting into a P2P network isn't a corporation and
can't be pursued as one.

and B) the majors simply aren't
combatting the KNOWN winners of the teen's dollars, which is simply
alternative methods of entertainment.

I'm sure that they're still supportive of radio, TV, and movies. They
just don't consider that sitting at a computer listening to little
speakerc is "entertainment" (and neither do I), but they realize that
those people could be buying CDs. That's where they see the loss of
revenue.

An example would be the "singles" market, which is virtually non-existant,
but singles are the only way the albums are promoted. However, in our young
people's minds today, and probably more true than not, is that there's only
one good song on the album anyway, and that's the single. Instant Catch-22.

What? You mean they don't sell 45's any more? g That was always a
good profit item because sometimes they could sell the same song twice
(when you bought the album). I guess the concept of the CD and CD
player just made it nonsensical to play just one song without
reloading. On the other hand, if you could go into a record store,
plug your player into a kiosk, have your pick of "singles" transferred
to it, and pay whatever the established price of a single was, they
could make money that way. Downloading from the Internet is just a
shortcut, and because people started doing that before anyone decided
that there could be money in it, the horse was already out of the barn
before anyone thought about putting up a door.

Now I don't know what the exact figures might be, but in the article they
alluded to a figure somewhere around 39,000 new products hit the shelves in
2001 and that dropped to 27,000 in 2002. Well, that's simply too much
product, mostly of questionable taste, and again we're talking about banking
on a few. Do we need 39,000 new products put on the shelves?

No, and I doubt that you'd find 39,000 products on the shelf at a
record store. Does that include an estimate of the private
productions, too? But then there are those who argue that every one of
those is important to SOMEONE, so it should get its opportunity to vie
for shelf space.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

In article writes:

A strange argument in that one won't make any royalties on albums not sold.
Selling one song a million times brings in far more money than an album that
sells 10,000 copies.

That's true, but I'll bet that there are statistics to show that
albums that only sell 10,000 won't have a single that would sell a
million. Have there been cases where there's been a million-seller
single where the sale of the album containing that single have been
next to nothing?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:znr1060113211k@trad...
In article writes:
technology to send files is simple. The technology to block
transmission of certain files and allow others is a little more
difficult but possible, at least for a few seconds until the
participants figure out what's happening and defetat the block.

hi. fyi, using any common encryption technique can allow peer to peer
file sharing to be completely and absolutely secure.

reference, "waste" by nullsoft, et al.

"John LeBlanc" wrote in message
...


Regardless of right or wrong, it will always be impossible to stop theft of
software (music is now more like software than it is like hard goods, a
barby doll, for instance.)

Period. You can put dents in piracy, but it makes people mad, and can
alienate your real customers to varying degrees depending on the methods you
use. What you want to do is protect your real customers, give them a good
experience and some value added, and if that means letting some people who
don't buy from you anyway steal, well, consider it viral marketing and move
on. Because from a technical point of view, I'll say it again, there is no
way to stop digital piracy.

Consider these issues, put your moralism aside, and consider the fact that
Apple's iMusic, the product of a company that has dealt with these issues
for many many years, has been a success where the more draconian schemes of
the major media conglomerates have been a complete and utter failure.

And if you really want to know why sales are down, watch 'teen choice
awards'. The sales damage done by downloading pales in comparison to the
problem of wretched, overpriced product that not even twelve year olds can
bring themselves to care about.

jb

"nicholas yu" wrote in message
m...

exactly. it probably always will be impossible, to make it
technically impossible for people to make copies of music.

as this article implies, media piracy is nothing new.

it is my opinion then, that the RIAA is seriously misguided in its
attempt to sue half of america.

Using your logic he

1. It will always be impossible to make it technically impossible for
people
to kill other people.
2. Therefore, there is no point in trying to stop murder.

Except it is wrong and illegal to commit murder and there are penalties
that
are levied against those who commit murder. It is the imminent threat of
that penalty that keeps most people from infracting that law.

It is wrong and illegal to break copyright laws and there are penalties
for
doing so. What we are discussing now is applying those penalties. Break a
law, pay the price for getting caught. Just because something is easy to
do
doesn't make it okay to do it.


they need to remember "who butters
their bread." they have become giant, succesful businesses BECAUSE of
the very people they are trying to litigate.

And people who enjoy the music these companies produce and distribute need
to remember "who butters their bread." It's a two-way street, kiddo.


instead of trying to bully around their own customers, they need to
figure out how to give the people what they want, how to sell a
product that people will want. as technology changes,

Instead of stealing from the cookie jar, some people need to be mindful of
right and wrong, rather than their selfish desires to get what they want,
how they want, and at the price they are willing to pay.

John

In article writes:

hi. fyi, using any common encryption technique can allow peer to peer
file sharing to be completely and absolutely secure.

Right - secure from those trying to intercept transmission. Or is this
your point?



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )

(Mike Rivers) wrote in message news:znr1060343955k@trad...
In article writes:

hi. fyi, using any common encryption technique can allow peer to peer
file sharing to be completely and absolutely secure.

Right - secure from those trying to intercept transmission. Or is this
your point?

exactly. it probably always will be impossible, to make it
technically impossible for people to make copies of music.

as this article implies, media piracy is nothing new.

it is my opinion then, that the RIAA is seriously misguided in its
attempt to sue half of america. they need to remember "who butters
their bread." they have become giant, succesful businesses BECAUSE of
the very people they are trying to litigate.

instead of trying to bully around their own customers, they need to
figure out how to give the people what they want, how to sell a
product that people will want. as technology changes,

"John LeBlanc" writes:

"Joe Pacheco" wrote in message
om...
or the lack there of:

Bringing sales into the argument is a red herring. This issue is
intellectual property rights of ownership, first and
foremost. Unauthorized trading of music ignores the fact that the
owners of the songs do not want them traded. P2P fans, on the other
hand, believe that "music" is a religion.

Go to

http://www.baen.com

and select the `Free Library' on the top bar. Read the `Prime Palaver'
article for another view of it all.

--
Paul Repacholi 1 Crescent Rd.,
+61 (08) 9257-1001 Kalamunda.
West Australia 6076
comp.os.vms,- The Older, Grumpier Slashdot
Raw, Cooked or Well-done, it's all half baked.
EPIC, The Architecture of the future, always has been, always will be.

x-no archive: yes

Mike Rivers wrote:

HAH!!!! If I had to live off what I make by reviewing equipment, I'd
start writing songs. I think you'd better leave irrelevant insults out
of this and keep your insults relevant to me and the topic.

Why, you wiley old curmudgeon, you, you can't even find a _thumbpick_
that suits you!

(I mod'd one last week using the heatshrink gun to relax the plastic
slightly and then bending it to suit. I might yet come up with the MR
signature mod'd thumbpick.)

--
ha

reddred wrote:
on. Because from a technical point of view, I'll say it again, there is no
way to stop digital piracy.

Consider these issues, put your moralism aside, and consider the fact that
Apple's iMusic, the product of a company that has dealt with these issues
for many many years, has been a success where the more draconian schemes of
the major media conglomerates have been a complete and utter failure.

The iTunes model does appear to be a success, and I hope that both Apple
and the artists on Itunes will succeed with this venture. But it will be
interesting to see what happens when the initial contracts Apple signed
with the Big Content come up for renewal. It appears as if one reason
the big media content folks went with itunes was because of the limited
downside Apple's 5% market share exposed them to. That and the big sums
of money Apple waved around. Steven St. Croix speculates - plausibly, I
might add - that Apple paid 50 million or so for a limited contract
with the catalogs they have now - a relatively small, controlled
experiment for both Apple and Big Content. If this experiment goes well,
maybe the next move is into the Wintel world.

Will Apple see an adequate ROI for their money and will the artists be
happy when it;s time to re-negotiate? I hope so. A lot of people seem to
like iTunes.

Artie



And if you really want to know why sales are down, watch 'teen choice
awards'. The sales damage done by downloading pales in comparison to the
problem of wretched, overpriced product that not even twelve year olds can
bring themselves to care about.

jb


"nicholas yu" wrote in message
. com...


exactly. it probably always will be impossible, to make it
technically impossible for people to make copies of music.

as this article implies, media piracy is nothing new.

it is my opinion then, that the RIAA is seriously misguided in its
attempt to sue half of america.

Using your logic he

1. It will always be impossible to make it technically impossible for

people

to kill other people.
2. Therefore, there is no point in trying to stop murder.

Except it is wrong and illegal to commit murder and there are penalties

that

are levied against those who commit murder. It is the imminent threat of
that penalty that keeps most people from infracting that law.

It is wrong and illegal to break copyright laws and there are penalties

for

doing so. What we are discussing now is applying those penalties. Break a
law, pay the price for getting caught. Just because something is easy to

do

doesn't make it okay to do it.



they need to remember "who butters
their bread." they have become giant, succesful businesses BECAUSE of
the very people they are trying to litigate.

And people who enjoy the music these companies produce and distribute need
to remember "who butters their bread." It's a two-way street, kiddo.



instead of trying to bully around their own customers, they need to
figure out how to give the people what they want, how to sell a
product that people will want. as technology changes,

Instead of stealing from the cookie jar, some people need to be mindful of
right and wrong, rather than their selfish desires to get what they want,
how they want, and at the price they are willing to pay.

John

"John LeBlanc" wrote in message ...
"nicholas yu" wrote in message
m...

exactly. it probably always will be impossible, to make it
technically impossible for people to make copies of music.

as this article implies, media piracy is nothing new.

it is my opinion then, that the RIAA is seriously misguided in its
attempt to sue half of america.

Using your logic he

1. It will always be impossible to make it technically impossible for people
to kill other people.
2. Therefore, there is no point in trying to stop murder.

hi - thanks for your response. i feel that you have misinterpreted by
post. i did not mean to imply that:

something is impossible to make technically impossible = there is no
point in trying to stop it.

i stated that it is impossible to technically stop music copying, in
response to mike river's previous request to clarify my post.

i then re-iterated a very good point of the article, which is that
perhaps peer-to-peer file sharing has not really had such a giant
impact on the record label's bottom line as some might think. proving
a causal link this can be very problematic. as many people on this
thread and elsewhere have pointed out, there _have always_ been many
ways to obtain music without paying royalties to the label and
musician (used CDs, mix tapes)

therefore, it is my opinion that the recent spate of litigation taken
on by the RIAA is a gross overreraction, and in the end will hurt
their bottom line.

take the case of that student at princeton university. the software
he wrote was absolutely trivial. in fact, it duplicated a feature
that is _exactly present_ in windows XP. now this kid is trying to
pay off his $15,000 litigation. isn't the law supposed to protect
people? now, how many princeton university students are going to be
sympathetic to the RIAA in the future? aren't these tomorrow's CEOs,
judges, lawyers, etc? remember that the right to have sole control
over the duplication of art is given to the artist and the label, by
the law, which is turn controlled by CEOs, judges, lawyers, etc...

hey, "kiddo", i know it costs money to make music. i'm looking over
on my desk and there's a $800 preamp that some people here would even
say is pretty ****ty. everyone needs to make money to make music. i
need to make money to make music. but, the poing of my post, was that
the RIAA is going about it all the wrong way. mass litigations are
just ****ing a lot of people off. instead of shooting from the hip,
it'd be more productive to try to come up with a new business model to
make money.

how about the subscription model? a friend of mine works at one of
the largest start-ups attempting to do this. he claimed big 5
cooperation was uncooperative at best.

how about the value-added model? give away 32kbs MP3's, sell CDs with
nice giant packaging and liner art. no?

how about the iTunes model?

if they don't work things out soon, encrypted peer to peer nodes are
going to be popping up. it's my belief that it really is the "trump
card." how is one to stop that? sorry, it's just impossible. and
then, who knows, maybe the big labels will die. maybe not.


Except it is wrong and illegal to commit murder and there are penalties that
are levied against those who commit murder. It is the imminent threat of
that penalty that keeps most people from infracting that law.

It is wrong and illegal to break copyright laws and there are penalties for
doing so. What we are discussing now is applying those penalties. Break a
law, pay the price for getting caught. Just because something is easy to do
doesn't make it okay to do it.


they need to remember "who butters
their bread." they have become giant, succesful businesses BECAUSE of
the very people they are trying to litigate.

And people who enjoy the music these companies produce and distribute need
to remember "who butters their bread." It's a two-way street, kiddo.


instead of trying to bully around their own customers, they need to
figure out how to give the people what they want, how to sell a
product that people will want. as technology changes,

Instead of stealing from the cookie jar, some people need to be mindful of
right and wrong, rather than their selfish desires to get what they want,
how they want, and at the price they are willing to pay.

John

In article writes:

Why, you wiley old curmudgeon, you, you can't even find a _thumbpick_
that suits you!

All I want is some more Dobro medium thumb picks. They fit, they point
in the right direction, and they're heavy enough not to go "clickety
click." Maybe I need to start checking eBay. Thanks for reminding me.



--
I'm really Mike Rivers - )