[Falcon]

?!?!?!?!?!


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122800693.html



!!

[Kosh]

In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer

Should be covered under fair use, RIAA doesn't have a good case this time.

[WMCoolmon]

Do you really think it can be dismissed out of hand that easily?

The RIAA (and the MPAA)'s practice has been to reserve itself the right to prosecute as many people as possible. It doesn't matter that they don't always do it; they simply want the power to do so, so that they can charge as much money as possible. It's business. In fact, I thought that one of the key points of the DMCA was that this sort of thing was illegal.

Doesn't matter whether it's right or wrong or appropriate or not, the RIAA will put up a fight for it because it could potentially double their market. It's good business practice, why should you expect anything else from them? Pleasing the customer is no big deal for them thanks to the wide distribution of their products and the level of establishment of big companies. You can find music distributed by the RIAA on the radio, in bookstores, in video stores, in drug stores, practically anywhere that sells CDs, but you really have to work to find independent music.

[Nuke]

its sorta messed up that they think that they can tell you what not to do with a cd you bought. we have these things called mp3 players, and for them to play mp3s, we gotta rip our cds. these music companies need to get over the fact that their business model is obsolete, and stop treating their customers like cattle.

most of the main stream labels dont even seem capable of putting out decent music (if you can call it music at all). i can name 2 reasons why the riaa and its labels must be destroyed. gangsta rap, and whorishly dressed (if you can call what they wear clothing) pop stars. its amazing how long they have been able to promote sex, drugs, and violence to kids with there so called music.

sure they hit the markets with fluff they know will sell. but when they try to manipulate good artists and end up killing the band, then they really piss me off. im sure everyone knows a couple artists who are pissed off at their label. the riaa dont seem concerned about making music, they often dont represent the artists (some of them even go as far as saying that file sharing is good for the industry). really i wish more artists would just do the recordings themselves and release through independent channels.

[karajorma]

Sue them for racketeering if they try it. You wouldn't be the first.

[Prophet]

its sorta messed up that they think that they can tell you what not to do with a cd you bought. we have these things called mp3 players, and for them to play mp3s, we gotta rip our cds. these music companies need to get over the fact that their business model is obsolete, and stop treating their customers like cattle.

No no no, you got it all wrong. Ofcourse to expect you to by an Ipod and buy music for it from the net. Thus effectively making you buy the music twice if you already have it in CD. If you only have it in your player, eventually you drop it in water or something. And once again you have to buy the music in order to listen. Profit!

[IceFire]

And if it were ever to get that draconian they would then suddenly wonder why their sales would continue to drop...

So far the non DRM'ed music releases have been generally to extremely popular and held as a success.  Most people would just go and buy the music if it was easy and didn't cost more than was expected.  When it goes above and beyond that people do whatever is easiest.  Some folks will always pirate everything even if the cost was infinitesimally small and there should be enough legal precedent to keep those folks limited to a small minority but treating every customer as a pirate is not good for appeal.

Usually things float down the middle somewhere until someone gets a good idea and does something that breaks us out of the argument.

[Nuke]

its sorta messed up that they think that they can tell you what not to do with a cd you bought. we have these things called mp3 players, and for them to play mp3s, we gotta rip our cds. these music companies need to get over the fact that their business model is obsolete, and stop treating their customers like cattle.

No no no, you got it all wrong. Ofcourse to expect you to by an Ipod and buy music for it from the net. Thus effectively making you buy the music twice if you already have it in CD. If you only have it in your player, eventually you drop it in water or something. And once again you have to buy the music in order to listen. Profit!

of course they are raking in the money. thats why they arent changing their business model. but they are in the downward spiral. if there sales continue to drop eventually it will get to the point where they can no longer afford to manipulate the laws, or file barrages of lawsuits. when that happens they will either have to change the way they do business, or go out of business.

they would probably make more money if they let their customers do what they want with the music they bought. increased data portability these days pretty much means their customers provide them with distribution and promotion free of charge. if anything they should pay the pirates for promoting their artists. advertising is expensive, set fees, editing, boob job for the spokeswoman, ect. they had an oppritunity to take advantage of all the free publicity and distribution, but they didnt take it.  when i buy a cd i expect to get my moneys worth. if you want to restrict my rights with what i can do with it, by all means reduce the price.

in the cassette era people were sharing just as much music. any cheap boom box could copy a tape. i remember one point my older brother had amassed at least 500 pirated tapes. of course back then some of those companys, sony to name one, were dipping their hands into profits from sales of blank tapes, as well as recording equipment. the only thing that has really changed is how tyrannical those companys have become, and how far out of touch with technology they are.

[karajorma]

Sony still are making money from mp3 players now. Which led to one famous case where RIAA sued mp3 player makers on the behalf of the music companies and Sony was on both sides.

[Nuke]

rather hypocritical i think. every mp3 player comes with some sort of ripping software and can import pirate media. it seems to me those who wish to curb pirating are the ones who provide the ripping software. sony and apple both seem to be companies who have just as much interest in selling mp3 players as they do music. they both include some form of ripping and transfer software. they say you cant rip or copy your cds, then provide a means to perform the rip. the software that often comes with the player tends to be a little poor in quality, when compaired to other rippers like the one that comes with winamp or even wmp. i recently had to use windows media player to rip a cd that i bought, because it caused winamp to crash for some reason. it didnt mind ripping to a non drm format, and here i thought micropenisoft hated pirates too.

[Janos]

it would be easier if people didn't listen to music at all

instead, they could just pay a token amount of money to riaa every month

[Agent_Koopa]

This is ridiculous, there's no possible way this can stand up in court. It's patently absurd to regard ripping a track as copyright infringement. To make this illegal would be eliminating the entire music player industry. The RIAA is just trying to cover the cost of piracy by intimidating people into giving them money, at best, and just sucking money out of people because they feel like it at worst. IMO, this will spark a change in policy. It's obvious they can't get away with doing this.

they would probably make more money if they let their customers do what they want with the music they bought. increased data portability these days pretty much means their customers provide them with distribution and promotion free of charge. if anything they should pay the pirates for promoting their artists. advertising is expensive, set fees, editing, boob job for the spokeswoman, ect. they had an oppritunity to take advantage of all the free publicity and distribution, but they didnt take it.  when i buy a cd i expect to get my moneys worth. if you want to restrict my rights with what i can do with it, by all means reduce the price.

Pirates provide the industry with advertising and distribution, but zero revenue, which is kind of the most important thing when conducting a business.

[Hades]

Its allways about money.
Every thing is about money.
Nothing else matters, but money for the owners of Sony, Apple, and other large companies...
The world is close to complete corruption...
Sad isn't it?

[Agent_Koopa]

Hold on, from what I'm hearing the people in question shared the files on Kazaa as well as ripping them. If this is true, then perhaps the Washington Post got things wrong.

[Nuke]

most file sharing programs want to do a scan of your computer to find files to share. kazaa was known for doing this automatically at installation. others just use the my music folder, which is where most stupid people keep their mp3s. so situations occurred where people unknowingly shared their entire collections. but generally most of the p2p programs are defunct. you can still get stuff off of them but they are very unreliable. i like to think of accidental sharing to no longer be a problem. you might rip some tracks and put them on an mp3 player. then let a friend or one of your family use your computer. they can install something like emule into the back ground, thus sharing your files with the riaa. then thats just askin for trouble.

half of avoiding them is not making yourself a big fat target. by maintaining antip2p filters and not pirating pop music (their people probably never heard of darkthrone or mayhem ), and not sharing of files at once. fortunately, all the big name artists suck.

[Agent_Koopa]

I keep my music in My Music. It's a convenient place to put them. Also, I don't use p2p programs.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

Have you ever stopped to think about how many times you pay for a song?  First there were albums and 8trcks.  Then there was the cassette.  Then the CD.  How many of you have bought the same album on more than one of those media formats?  Then you pay again to listen to the same song on the radio by listening to advertising.  Got to the bar and pay again to drop some money in the jukebox.  Go to the concert pay for the tickets to here them play the song.  Song in a movie or TV show you watch then you pay to hear it again.  Want the ringtone they want you to pay for that too.  You want it on an MP3 player then why wouldn't you expect them to want you to pay for that too????  It's ridiculous.  I'm amazed they haven't started checking people who purchase MP3's backup tapes and filing suits for those copies.

As for the P2P software I have one old P2-450 running it.  No pirated files available and I rarely download anything.  I find it much easier to just copy someones entire media library when I work on their computer.