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OneFootInTheGrave
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Kuzelj
Nov 2000 time: 05:25
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And this is for dinner
http://www.janisian.com/article-internet_debacle.html
quote:
Here are a few statements from the RIAA's website:
# "Analysts report that just one of the many peer-to-peer systems in operation is responsible for over 1.8 billion unauthorized downloads per month". (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
# "Sales of blank CD-R discs have…grown nearly 2 ½ times in the last two years…if just half the blank discs sold in 2001 were used to copy music, the number of burned CDs worldwide is about the same as the number of CDs sold at retail." (Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
# "Music sales are already suffering from the impact…in the United States, sales decreased by more than 10% in 2001."(Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
# "In a recent survey of music consumers, 23%…said they are not buying more music because they are downloading or copying their music for free."(Hilary B. Rosen letter to the Honorable Rick Boucher, Congressman, February 28, 2002)
Let's take these points one by one, but before that, let me remind you of something: the music industry had exactly the same response to the advent of reel-to-reel home tape recorders, cassettes, DATs, minidiscs, VHS, BETA, music videos ("Why buy the record when you can tape it?"), MTV, and a host of other technological advances designed to make the consumer's life easier and better. I know because I was there.
The only reason they didn't react that way publicly to the advent of CDs was because they believed CD's were uncopyable. I was told this personally by a former head of Sony marketing, when they asked me to license Between the Lines in CD format at a reduced royalty rate. ("Because it's a brand new technology.")
# Who's to say that any of those people would have bought the CD's if the songs weren't available for free? I can't find a single study on this, one where a reputable surveyor such as Gallup actually asks people that question. I think no one's run one because everyone is afraid of the truth - most of the downloads are people who want to try an artist out, or who can't find the music in print.
And if a percentage of that 1.8 billion is because people are downloading a current hit by Britney or In Sync, who's to say it really hurt their sales? Soft statistics are easily manipulated. How many of those people went out and bought an album that had been over-played at radio for months, just because they downloaded a portion of it?
# Sales of blank CDs have grown? You bet. I bought a new Vaio in December (ironically enough, made by Sony), and now back up all my files onto CD. I go through 7-15 CD's a week that way, or about 500 a year. Most new PC's come with XP, which makes backing up to CD painless; how many people are doing what I'm doing? Additionally, when I buy a new CD, I make a copy for my car, a copy for upstairs, and a copy for my partner. That's three blank discs per CD. So I alone account for around 750 blank CDs yearly.
# I'm sure the sales decrease had nothing to do with the economy's decrease, or a steady downward spiral in the music industry, or the garbage being pushed by record companies. Aren't you? There were 32,000 new titles released in this country in 2001, and that's not including re-issues, DIY's , or smaller labels that don't report to SoundScan. Our "Unreleased" series, which we haven't bothered SoundScanning, sold 6,000+ copies last year. A conservative estimate would place the number of "newly available" CD's per year at 100,000. That's an awful lot of releases for an industry that's being destroyed. And to make matters worse, we hear music everywhere, whether we want to or not; stores, amusement parks, highway rest stops. The original concept of Muzak (to be played in elevators so quietly that its soothing effect would be subliminal) has run amok. Why buy records when you can learn the entire Top 40 just by going shopping for groceries?
# Which music consumers? College kids who can't afford to buy 10 new CDs a month, but want to hear their favorite groups? When I bought my nephews a new Backstreet Boys CD, I asked why they hadn't downloaded it instead. They patiently explained to their senile aunt that the download wouldn't give them the cool artwork, and more important, the video they could see only on the CD.
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is a bit... read more there and here if you want
http://www.janisian.com/articles.html
FALLOUT - a follow up to The Internet Debacle
quote:
II. My conclusions thus far:
"So why are the record labels taking such a hard line? My guess is that it's all about protecting their internet-challenged business model. Their profit comes from blockbuster artists. If the industry moved to a more varied ecology, independent labels and artists would thrive - to the detriment of the labels… The smoking gun comes from testimony of an RIAA-backed economist who told the government fee panel that a dramatic shakeout in Webcasting is 'inevitable and desirable because it will bring about market consolidation'." ("Labels to Net Radio: Die Now", Steven Levy in Newsweek, July 15, 2002.)
There are, as I see it, three operative issues that explain the entertainment industry's heavy-handed response to the concept of downloading music from the Internet:
1. Control. The music industry is no different from any other huge corporation, be it Mobil Oil or the Catholic church. When faced with a new technology or a new product that will revolutionize their business, their response is predictable:
a. Destroy it. And if they cannot,
b. Control it. And if they cannot,
c. Control the consumer who wishes to use it, and the legislators and laws that are supposed to protect that consumer.
This is not unique to the entertainment industry. This mind-set is part of the fabric of our daily lives. Movie companies sued over VCR manufacturing and blank video sales, with Jack Valenti (Motion Picture Association of America chairman) testifying to Congress that the VCR is to the movie industry what the Boston Strangler is to a woman alone at night - and yet, video sales now account for more industry profit than movies themselves. When Semelweiss discovered that washing your hands before attending a woman in childbirth eliminated "childbed fever", at a time when over 50% of women giving birth in hospitals died of it, he was ridiculed by his peers, who refused to do it. No entrenched model has ever embraced a new technology (or idea) without suffering the attendant death throes.
2. Ennui. The industry is still operating under laws and concepts developed during the 1930's and 1940's, before cassettes, before boom boxes, before MP3 and file-sharing and the Internet. It's far easier to insist that all new technologies be judged under old laws, than to craft new laws that embrace all existing technologies. It's much easier to find a scapegoat, than to examine your own practices. As they say, "You can't get fired for saying no."
3. The American Dream. The promises all of us are made, tacitly or otherwise, throughout our lives as Americans. The dream we inherit as each successive generation enters grade school - that we will be freer than our grandparents, more successful than our parents, and build a better world for our own children. The promises made by our textbooks, our presidents, and our culture, throughout the course of our childhoods: Fair pay for a day's work, and the right to strike. The right to leave a job that doesn't satisfy, or is abusive. Freedom from indentured servitude. The premise that every citizen is allowed a vote, and no one will ever be called "slave" again. The promise that libraries and basic education in this country are free, and will stay so. These are not ideas I came up with on the spur of the moment; this is what we're taught, by the culture we grow up in. And of everything we are taught, one issue is always paramount - in America, it is the people who rule. It is the people who determine our government. We elect our legislators, so they will pass laws designed for us. We elect and pay the thousands of judges, policemen, civil servants who implement the laws we elect our officials to pass.
It is the promise that our government supports the will of the people, and not the will of big business, that makes this issue so damning - and at the same time, so hope-inspiring.
When Disney are permitted to threaten suit against two clowns who dare to make mice out of three balloons and call them "Mickey", the people are not a part of it. When Senator Hollings accepts hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from entertainment conglomerates, then pretends money has nothing to do with his stance on downloading as he calls his own constituents "thieves", the people are not involved. When Representatives Berman and Coble introduce a bill allowing film studios and record companies to "disable, block or otherwise impair" your computer if they merely suspect you of file-trading, by inserting viruses and worms into your hard drive, it is the people who are imperiled. And when the CEO of RIAA commends this bill as an "innovative approach to combating the serious problem of Internet piracy," rather than admitting that it signifies a giant corporate step into a wasteland even our government security agencies dare not enter unscathed, the people are not represented. |
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Switch
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This just in, water has been discovered on Mars...
Apr 2002 time: 00:25
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I am personally against pirating. It's merely people stealing and infinging copyright, no two ways about it no matter how many moral implications you put on it. Also, it makes people lazier as they don't have to get a job to play the games they want, they only need an internet connection which probably their parents pay for (excluding those pirates of you who live alone). I, personally, work for what I want, and you know what...
it feels great! Before I developed a moral view towards piracy, I didn't mind it. But games just seem so much more satisfying when I pay for it with my own, hard-earned cash.
Now, as to raghar...if you don't mind piracy, then just don't copyright your work. But don't let your own view on the subject infringe on developers who do mind piracy.
Well, since I don't think I'm gonna be stopping piracy any time soon, I can at least do this to all of you warezers: 
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raghar
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I wish somewhere else.
Oct 2002 time: 05:25
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quote: Now, as to raghar...if you don't mind piracy, then just don't copyright your work. But don't let your own view on the subject infringe on developers who do mind piracy. |
To don't mind piracy and give up Copyright are two different things. I wouldn't have problem if some poor person from E evrope or China would use my prog (not to be rich by using my prog), but I would mind if some idiot would use part of my work, destroy meaning of that nice writen book or algorithm, and claim it as his own. It is rather experience that would speek to me about so much copy protection and so little time of the user...
As long as pirates would have notice who did that game and wouldn't charge, warezing would be one of lesser violation of your right.
BTW Switch, we are talking about two different groups of people. Unfortunately they would exist as two groups for a long time.
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