The RIAA could not control themselves and have filled more Lawsuits against P2P users. After all but admitting that there past actions have hurt them more than helped them they could not contain themselves and had to file more lawsuits.
Maybe they need the money to make salary over there, probably the bevy of lawyers on staff had nothing to do so they had to give them some work to do, so that they could bill some billable hours.
I would not be surprised if they have a money issue after all what have they done for music artist and music labels recently. Not a whole lot except piss the general public. Possibly this is a tact they will use when they ask there RIAA brethren at the Department of Justice to start suing John Q Public.
The sad part is music artist for the most part have gotten run over by the RIAA and deal with the negative publicity with there actions.
It seems like the RIAA is unstoppable in its crusade to sue music lovers into oblivion. They are using the courts to get their way with ridiculous judgments being handed out. A single illegal downloaded song can cost a person thousands. The RIAA really does not want to go to trial; they hope to scare people into paying up when threatened with a lawsuit. Most people will just pay up to avoid the extra hassle of facing a trial. I am not advocating stealing music because I believe it is stealing when you take something without paying. However the music industry (not all artists… look what Radiohead did) is being bull headed instead of changing with the times. And these judgments are not punishment that fits the “crime” There is no way that a few songs should cost as much as they do in penalties. The question is what can we do to destroy the RIAA.
I don’t think trying to pass any laws will help because the lobbyists are more incentivized than voters. They make money to get laws passed or to prevent laws from being enacted. Voters are just regular people with jobs & real lives. We don’t have time to know every single detail of what to vote on and when to do so. It is a very difficult thing to make changes through the voting booth. Tough but not impossible I know. Maybe a better way is to wreck the chances of any jury awarding outrageous cash to the RIAA & other such scum based groups. One way to do that is FIJA (Fully Informed Jury Association). Basically the Constitution set up the average person to be the final branch of government. We the People are the final road block to oppressive government. If lawmakers pass bad laws which are ruled on by corrupt judges then the jury becomes 12 super powerful humans that can do good. FIJA looks to educate Americans on a jury’s role in trials. Now this not mainstream stuff & judges will actually throw people off juries if they are found to be members of FIJA. So it is not going to be something that the powers that be will endorse, but the Constitution is supposed to be the highest law in the land. The concept is that a juror can not only find a defendant not guilty based on the evidence but also based on the fact that the law is BAD. The jury is in control. No really, they are. No matter what the judge tells them to ignore or base their findings on, they have the final say. So if I were on a jury and I knew I could prevent a real injustice from happening I would think it was my duty to do the right thing. If the word could be spread about FIJA then juries everywhere could be used to do away with bad judgments like what the RIAA goes after. This is a big task I know but I see no other way because the RIAA will not stop until someone stops them over & over again.
I don’t know how Pandora works. I just know it does. Pandora is an online music service I’m sure most of you have heard of if not used. I started using it last year and I absolutely love it. It learns what you like as you use it. You pick a single song or artist when starting up and it selects songs that it thinks you will enjoy based on some algorithm that is beyond my comprehension. I have been listening to Pandora since I sat down in front of my computer today and have heard about 2 songs that I was not crazy about and zero that I hated. That is a pretty good music service in my opinion. I hate fm / am radio because of the commercials. I have no time for them. That is why I like podcasts because most have no commercials. Even the live reads on some podcasts like Todd’s are fine because they take up less time and I think they sound more authentic because they are coming from the mouth of someone I trust for information.
I think it was the last podcast when Todd mentioned that Pandora might have to go to a subscription model since they are having to pay so much to some group (RIAA I assume) to play the music. If I were in front of my computer all day I would gladly pay a reasonably price but I work outside everyday while playing podcasts / music on an mp3 player. I think they will survive if they go to that model but I wish it did not have to come to that. I have heard songs that I either have never heard or did not know the details on and now love. How stupid is it for the RIAA & music artists to stop a service that puts music that they want to sell in front of millions of potential customers? I could easily download a program to record the music that is streaming through Pandora or I could keep track of the data for the music I like then go get the music through bit torrent. And I could get this music for free without Pandora but I don’t. I want musicians I like to make a great living & get rich. And it is just as easy to get my mp3’s from Amazon’s DRM free music service with one click purchasing as it is to steal it. The people who download for free are mostly younger people who don’t have the money to buy all the music they want. So the artists would likely never see any money from these people anyway until they were able to buy instead of get it free.
The RIAA is doing a disservice to musicians everywhere. Whether you agree with my logic or not the fact is that music is available for free and it can be gotten anonymously. So musicians better get with the program or become extinct. This is not 1985 so you better adjust to the marketplace. You cannot sue your clients and became profitable. I don’t know how the RIAA backs up their lawsuits but I want to see people just ignore the lawsuits & see what happens. Can they garnish wages, etc? I am not advising this action I just want to know how they plan to deal with people who non cooperate. If I were in charge of Pandora I would move my operations overseas & do like the Piratebay & keep my server locations secret. They have played by the rules and still have been attacked. They need to fight fire with fire.
For years the RIAA has put themselves up as the champions of the poor music creators whose livelihood is being stripped away by piracy. This justification has been touted for every action they have taken, from litigating against their customers, to the restriction of customers fair use. I don’t think anyone was naive enough to believe that their methods were altruistic, as they were paid by and obviously working in the interests of the large music publishers. The same publishers that, unlike the smaller labels, have never had a fantastic reputation for being generous to the talent.
Now the RIAA is showing how committed they are to the needs of the artist by proposing to the copyright board that the mechanical royalty that goes to the songwriter be almost halved. At 13% of wholesale revenue currently(split with the publisher), the songwriters are not exactly getting away with daylight robbery. Especially when you consider that the writing of the song is at least as important (more in some cases) than the artists interpretation to the success or failure of the song.
Big record companies were a powerful and efficient way to get music to consumers until about 10 & 15 years ago. Now the game has changed and the big labels are not willing to change to suit the new environment. Rather than suffer from their own mistakes they would like to make others pay the price. They started with consumers by making them suffer onerous DRM and reducing the value they get from their purchase by reducing the rights of use they have. Now they want to make the people that create and produce the music to pay for their mistakes as well! The audacity is as mind boggling as the short sightedness.
The Big labels Rome is smoldering and Nero is reaching for his fiddle.
Update – I may have given the RI too much credit (i.e. any credit at all) for showing some intelligence. The music industry is backing away from the service and the whole thing might die before it starts. Lets hope sense prevails. Thanks to Mario for the techdirt find
TechDirt
Financial Times
MTV
If this article from The Times is completely accurate a new service backed by EMI, Universal and Warner called QTrax will launch in the next 24 hrs that may show that the music industry have been taking at least some of the criticism leveled at them seriously.
While the website is already active the service relies on a custom application that is not yet available for download. This application seems to be a customised version of the Mozilla browser that will allow users to connect to the QTrax website and download and play from a catalog of 25 million songs. The tracks are protected by DRM but are in an MP3 format. There is no details yet on exactly what the MP3 player compatibility and availability is, but presumably the DRM will make this limited. The service will also be supported by ad revenue. The distribution of files is via P2P although the exact form this takes is unclear.
There are a number of reasons why this is a potentially brilliant move.
- This is finally recognition that music is art. As such its value is not diminished by its consumption unless it is bad. The consumption of good art actually increases its value and should therefore be encouraged.
- The inclusion of rare, live and unreleased tracks in the service allows fans to engage more with their favorite bands. It allows them to find and sample material they were not previously aware of and they consequently become more attached to the band.
- P2P technology means that the record companies don’t have to pay the bandwidth bill for free listening and imposes at least a minimal cost to the consumer. It also makes it a more social environment, you can only get your music for free if you help other people do the same thing.
- Unbelievably this is a use of DRM I can support. The point of DRM in this instance is to link you to the player which allows the music industry to receive the advertising revenue, collect good stats, and limit our use of the music. This is absolutely justifiable when there is no charge. It has never been my contention that music should be free, just that there should be a method to interact with it freely. If you want to listen to anything for free use the service and pay with ad revenue and stats. If you want to do anything extra, like put it on an MP3 player, burn it to a CD or listen to it in better quality, buy it.
- It removes any justification for any person that can use this service to use any other method to get unauthorised copies of music. If there is a method that you can listen to the song free of charge any other use must be paid for. Removing the justifications people use in their own minds when they pirate will reduce this activity. The availability of this service will also mend a large proportion of the ill-will a lot of the music consuming public has to the commercial side of the music industry as well.
- It exposes the consumers to the back catalog which is the most underutilised resource in the whole music world. While the top 100 makes the most visible money to the RIAA members, the older releases could be a much greater source of revenue for them.
I am looking forward to seeing, and reporting on what the reality of this service is, but on paper it is very impressive. QTrax has the potential to significantly increase the sales of music. It is an absolute fact that the more music a person listens to, the more they buy. By allowing people to listen to huge amounts of music they will increase sales.
In a case against an unrepresented defendant the RIAA has included a statement into the brief for summary judgment
Defendant admitted that he converted these sound recordings from their original format to the .mp3 format for his and his wife’s use. (Howell Dep. 107:24 to 110:2; 114:1 to 116:16). The .mp3 format is a “compressed format [that] allows for rapid transmission of digital audio files from one computer to another by electronic mail or any other file transfer protocol.” Napster, 239 F.3d at 1011. Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs’ recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs.
While some of the argument relates to the defendant putting the mp3 files into his Kazaa shared folder, the wording clearly tries to get case precedent for two items
I have said previously that the end game for the recording industry is to charge for every time you listen to a song, essentially making you subscribe to music rather than to own it. The concept of fair use means nothing to them but lost revenue.
Copyright was not intended for this, it was meant to stop people playing your music and claiming it was your own. We have already extended this to cover exploitation of the work and into what you can do with music that you have purchased. And how this industry have managed to get so much influence on what so many governments legislate completely boggles my mind.
Commentary on /. and BoingBoing
A study in Canada has been released that proves what many (myself included) have known for years, that on average people that pirate music are more likely to buy CD’s rather than less. The study was sponsored by the Canadian government and is a bit of a slog to read, but there is already some very good analysis of it on the Web.
While I have seen (and helped conduct) a number of studies on this topic in recent years, this one is by far the most conclusive and the most reliable one I have seen. Spanning nearly a year and with over 2000 participants this study has a very low margin for error. From what I have seen so far, there also doesn’t seem to be any inherent bias in the conducters of this study, although this is something I will be researching further.
The study is exclusively conducted among Canadian citizens, and the cultural and environmental similarities make this almost directly applicable to the majority of the English speaking first world. The first key finding was that the net effect of illegal downloads on CD purchases in Canada was zero. That’s right, zero, zilch, nada, nil, the big donut. Amongst those that did download though, there was a direct, positive correlation between the number of songs downloaded and the number of CD’s purchased. The more people got for free, the more they paid for.
I have long known that the RIAA’s tactic of suing big downloaders meant they were also targeting their biggest customers. Ironically the money they win from their lawsuits is money that would probably have been spent on music. It’s not as stupid when you factor in that they are trying to change a cultural mores rather than claim damages. In this case they are only moderately stupid, given that the group they are targeting are not likely to respond well to these tactics, rather than monumentally stupid in driving their best customers away.
This study will generate a lot of noise in the coming days/weeks. It is unlikely that the music industry will come to its senses, but here’s hoping.
Reports from the Capitol v Thomas case are starting to come in with the jury awarding $220,000 to the record companies. There is no mention of an appeal yet, but one would assume this is inevitable.
An interesting fact that came up in the trial was that Thomas was a very large consumer of legal music. This backs up what has been said for years, that the recording industry is sueing their biggest customers. Expecting the recording industry to get their heads out of the sand at this point is a pipe dream.
If you are interested in this trial, keep an eye on Ars Technica this week. They are giving this daily coverage, the first days wrapup already posted.
The beginning has been predictable, with RIAA witnesses banging on about how much piracy costs them. The defence tactic to date seems to be around questioning the methods the RIAA uses to gather their information, and whether they can offer conclusive proof.
After more than 4 years of their much reviled litigation of their customers, the RIAA may be about to get what it has tried to avoid, actually going to trial. While I am sure you have heard of the recent ruling of costs against them, this was after they tried to back out of the case without prejudice, and were smacked for the judge for it. The only facts tried in court in this case were regarding whether they could pull out of litigation scott free after costing the defendant money.
This trial will actually judge the merits of RIAA’s tactics directly, and so far the RIAA has seemed very scared of this. Historically the terms of settlement have been attractive enough that anyone charged that is actually guilty has settled, and in the cases where the defendant has fought, the RIAA has dropped out in some way before getting to a jury. In this case the RIAA tried for summary judgement, meaning the judge makes a determination without going to full jury trial. That was denied so we will see the RIAA in court with a jury on October 2. You can see more detail on the case at Recording Industry vs the People
The RIAA must be having some trouble in court as they have had issues with mis-identification of the people they are going after. So in order to preserve evidence longer they want ISP’s to hold connection logs up to 180 days. If the ISP agrees to do so apparently the RIAA will offer those they are suing a discount on their settlement of $1000.00
So let me get this straight, the RIAA wants ISP’s to hold logs longer, which will in turn let them sue more people, and in return the RIAA is going to do the ISP a favour and help their customers save money in the litigation that may or may not have happened had the ISP held the logs for a shorter period.
This stinks really bad and it is obvious that the RIAA sees a lot of money to be made in their continual abuse of the justice system and strong arming of those they are accusing.
Any ISP that agrees to this should be put on a blacklist. recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com
Yes you read correctly not 1.65 Million not 1.65 Billion but 1.65 Trillion dollars is the amount of the Lawsuit against AllofMp3.com this number is so beyond ridiculous that I cannot even start to comprehend what these idiots over at the RIAA are thinking.
This number may be so outrageous that they may finally draw the attention of the general populous in this country, this demonstrates how insane this organization really is. If I knew how many artist they represent we could come up with a dollar amount of how much each would collect if the RIAA was actually able to collect on such a insane number. [CyberTechNews]
It really takes a class act to drop a lawsuit against a mother and then re-assign the lawsuit to her kids. Kids are kids, and I just bet if those at the RIAA went home and searched their kids computers they may be surprised to find some illegal music at home as well.
Let’s get really honest here. Kids do stupid stuff, and with technology the way it is today most parents have naught a clue as to what the kids are up to. I have been called in more than once by a suspecting parent to do some low level analysis of their kids computer to find out what they are up to.
In 99% of the cases, the kids have not covered their tracks and a wealth of material from software, videos, games and music and of course porn show up on the drive. Sometimes the kids work hard to be stealthy but some digging around usually reveals the goods.
I usually have a heart to heart with the parent and work on a computer use strategy that will help mitigate the activity. I usually leave before the nuclear bomb goes off in those homes, but in the end lets face it the parents are ultimately responsible for the kids actions.
They call kids minors for a reason. It’s because the laws of this country in most instances realize kids are gonna mess up and cut them a break if the issue is isolated. Which brings us full circle the RIAA is worried about one thing Money, Money, Money. [TechDirt]
