Music

MP3s Are Not the Devil

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Orson Scott Card says:

Do you think these companies care about the money that the actual creators of the work are being deprived of when people copy CDs and DVDs?

Here’s a clue: Movie studios have, for decades, used “creative accounting” to make it so that even hit movies never manage to break even, thus depriving the creative people of their “percentage of profits.” A few have dared to sue, but most figure that it isn’t worth the ill will. (The sentence “You’ll never work in this town again” runs through their minds. They remember what happened to Cliff Robertson after he blew the whistle on an executive who was flat-out embezzling!)

And record companies manage to skim enormous amounts of money from ever CD sold. As you can easily calculate by going to the computer store and figuring out the price of an individual recordable blank CD. Figure that the record companies have been paying a fraction of that price for years. Then subtract that from the price of a CD. Figure the songwriters and performers are getting some ludicrously small percentage — less than twenty percent, I’d bet — and all the rest flows to the record company.

In other words, the people complaining about all the internet “thieves” are, by any reasonable measure, rapacious profiteers who have been parasitically sucking the blood out of copyrights on other people’s work.

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The real pirates — people who make knock-off copies of CDs and DVDs and sell them in direct competition (or in foreign markets) — make a lot of money in some markets, but most of those are overseas. It’s a problem, but some reasonable combination of private investigation and police work and international treaties should deal with that.

Internet “pirates,” though, usually are more like a long-distance group that trades CDs around.

If you got together with a few of your neighbors and each of you bought different CDs and then lent them to each other, that wouldn’t even violate copyright.

In fact, the entire music business absolutely depends on the social interaction of kids to make hits. You stop kids from sharing music, and you’ve shut down the hit-making machine.

[From The Ornery American via SlashDot]

RIAA getting sued over Amnesty Program

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“A day after the Recording Industry Association of America filed a slew of lawsuits against alleged illegal song swappers, it became the target of legal action over its own “amnesty” program.

California resident Eric Parke, on behalf of the general public of the state, filed a suit Tuesday against the trade association because of its amnesty, or “Clean Slate,” program, a provisional shield it introduced Monday that allows people to avoid legal action by stepping forward and forfeiting any illegally traded songs. The suit, filed in the Marin Superior Court of California, charges that the RIAA’s program is a deceptive and fraudulent business practice.

It is “designed to induce members of the general public…to incriminate themselves and provide the RIAA and others with actionable admissions of wrongdoing under penalty of perjury while (receiving)…no legally binding release of claims…in return,” according to the complaint.”

(Kevin Christley) [Lockergnome Bytes]

RIAA Lands a Big One – in the Face

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RIAA Sues 12-Year Old Girl

“tcp100 noted an article running at fox about The RIAA suing a 12 Year Old girl: ”I got really scared. My stomach is all turning,’ Brianna said last night at the city Housing Authority apartment where she lives with her mom and her 9-year-old brother.'” [Slashdot]

And she’s an honors student, too. Yeah, that’s exactly the kind of big fish the RIAA needs to fry in order to save their business model. Brianna and her family have already settled the suit for $2,000, which means Brianna probably won’t be buying any CDs either. Good job, RIAA!

Yes, what Brianna did was illegal, but she sure didn’t make any money from it. If the RIAA will go after 12-year olds, do you doubt that they’ll go after libraries in order to save their precious business model? Maybe not lawsuits, but they’ll do whatever they need to in order to close digital loopholes that let us circulate digital files.

[The Shifted Librarian]

Peter Gabriel on Sharing

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From alt.music.peter-gabriel:

CB: and your view on the copy protection issue?

PG: I’m on two sides of the fence, maybe three, as an artist, but I’ve also
got involved in OD2, which is a digital distribution network, so I’ve spent
a lot of time discussing the issue. In some ways we are the canary down the
mine, the first battle ground, but behind us goes anyone who creates
anything that can be turned into data whether its software, films pictures
or music. Do people who create material have entitlement to get royalties?
That’s a bigger question for society. I would argue that you would get
better range, better quality and better choice if you do pay the creator
something. We live in the luxury of the in between world at the moment where
some people pay for the records while others get it for free. It is the part
of it that is the market stall, and at a certain point there will be less
fruit on the stall if there’s no money coming in. It’s strange for me to see
some artists saying ‘yeah I’m all for file sharing and free down-loading’
and at the same time they take multi-million pound contracts from record
companies. In the case of our record label, Real World, many of the artists
get sixty or seventy percent of their income from record royalties. If that
is taken away, a lot of them will not be able to continue as working
musicians – the same applies to young bands, anyone outside of the
mainstream. The other side of the coin is what is it people would be
prepared to pay for? I think were it me, I would look for convenience and
speed with all the range of musical possibilities on offer – while the key
for me would be that it was well filtered, because I know that in twenty
hours of watching TV or listening to music, I know that there is better
stuff than I am currently getting but I don’t have the time or energy to
wade through it. That is something that I would pay for. I read a few years
ago that the average record is played 1.3 times, and at first that depressed
me a lot until I thought about it and looked at my own record collection and
realised that it was probably about right; while there maybe twenty or so
discs that you play regularly, there is a ton of stuff that has just been
casual purchases – maybe you liked the cover – and you played it once and
never went back to it. This should be reflected in the price one pays for
the download, if you try and charge what you would pay in a record store
it’s never going to work.

This CD comes with a copy protection DEVICE

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Compilasian, The World of Indipop (Narada World, 2003)

The release of Narada World’s Compilasian (The World of Indipop) comes as more of a sign of changes to come in the record industry than as the cutting edge music it boast. For those readers not aware of the Indipop label, it is a cottage industry label created by producer Steve Coe who is also Sheila Chandra’s husband. Narada World recently licensed Indipop catalogue, including Sheila Chandra’s Indipop releases. And with the release of Compilasian, itself a compilation of unreleased tracks of the groups Monsoon, Sheila Chandra, The Ganges Orchestra, Jhalib and East West, comes with a piracy protection device, called Copy Control. Only time will tell if this device actually puts more money in the hands of recording artists or acts as a trigger for more paranoia in the world. The Copy Control actually comes with its own player and a symbol reflective of the big brother that is watching you. This could cause discomfort in even the most innocent record buyer, especially coming at a time when people believe that the government too is watching their every move. And by the way, as a journalist, I am here to get the word out on musicians and I do not condone piracy. However, I will also say that there is too much fear in the world and I am disappointed that so many establishments succumb to fear instead of spreading love on the planet. Trust is a derivative of love. Protection and security are derivatives of fear (a gentle reminder). [World Music Central News]

Not that I’m wishing failure for the artists, but I hope nobody buys this CD. We shouldn’t have to put up with copy protection devices. We need to let the record companies know we’re not going to stand for that.