from the -best-laid-plans-of-mice-and-men-oft-go-astray dept.
Cary Sherman, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, has some choice words about the current state of US copyright law. He says that under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, rightsholders must play a game of whack-a-mole with Internet companies to get them to remove infringing content.
But that "never-ending game" has allowed piracy to run amok and has cheapened the legal demand for music. Sure, many Internet companies remove links under the DMCA's "notice-and-takedown" regime. But the DMCA grants these companies, such as Google, a so-called "safe harbor"—meaning companies only have to remove infringing content upon notice from rightsholders.
Sherman added:
Compounding the harm is that some major online music distributors are taking advantage of this flawed system. Record companies are presented with a Hobson’s choice: Accept below-market deals or play that game of whack-a-mole. The notice and takedown system—intended as a reasonable enforcement mechanism—has instead been subverted into a discount licensing system where copyright owners and artists are paid far less than their creativity is worth.
If the RIAA is tired of playing whack-a-mole, perhaps it's time for them to greet their new mole overlords.
See our previous stories: Why the Record for DMCA Takedown Notices to Google was Smashed Yet Again and Fair-Use Proponents Score Early Win in DMCA Copyright Case.
Related Stories
TorrentFreak reports
In a single week (beginning August 18, 2015) Google processed a mind-boggling 13,685,322 allegedly infringing URLs. That's almost 23 copyright complaints handled by the search giant every single second--or 100 URLs in the time it took to read this sentence.
In the most recently reported month, 5,991 copyright holders and 2,683 reporting organizations requested the removal of 55,702,393 URLs from 80,256 domains.
The most complained about services were all file-hosting sites including Chomikuj.pl (1,089,458 URLs), Rapidgator.net (711,175), and Uploaded.net (664,299).
[...] Two [...] sets of circumstances are undoubtedly inflating the figures reported by Google. Interestingly, they're both a direct result of copyright holder actions.
While domain takedowns have inconvenienced several large sites in recent times, those affected are increasingly using multiple domains to mitigate the problem. It's a strategy now being employed by many of the leading torrent sites--cut one head from the hydra and another appears, as the saying goes.
[...] Another big issue is caused by site blocking. Again taking The Pirate Bay as an example, there are now dozens if not hundreds of active proxies, mirrors, and clones, each of which attract their own sets of takedown demands.
[...] The tide of notices being sent to Google [...] [appears] to be having almost no effect on content availability. All popular movies and music tracks remain just a few clicks away. Let's not forget, Google takes down links to content, not the content itself.
In what could be an upset to the media companies use of automated DMCA takedowns the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on Monday that copyright holders must consider fair use before demanding companies such as YouTube remove potentially infringing content and can be liable for damages if they do not.
The three-judge panel on the court determined Stephanie Lenz, who posted a YouTube video of her child dancing to a Prince song in 2007, could proceed with her lawsuit seeking damages from Universal Music Corp., which pressed YouTube to remove the video under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). "We hold that the statute requires copyright holders to consider fair use before sending a takedown notification, and that failure to do so raises a triable issue as to whether the copyright holder formed a subjective good faith belief that the use was not authorized by law," according to the majority opinion.
It's not completely clear cut and dried however, as the court found that "the implementation of computer algorithms appears to be a valid and good faith middle ground for processing a plethora of content while still meeting the DMCA's requirements to somehow consider fair use." It speculated about a model in which a company sets up a computer program to send automatic takedown notices for content it identifies as nearly identical to copyrighted work, while a backup process uses humans to manually review other content that the computer program identified with less certainty.
While an appeal is probably inevitable, could this possibly be some light at the end of the tunnel for some of the overreaching and abusive use of the DMCA to take down non-infringing and fair use content?
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Sunday September 27 2015, @11:39PM
piracy to run amok and has cheapened the legal demand for music.
Yes, of course piracy is the reason. New technology, new distribution channels, indie labels, hate for the RIAA, and a lack of quality music in a market with more available choices had nothing to do with it. I'm sure that's why not as many people are buying the latest trash from Mylie Cyrus. It would be great to ignore their whining if we didn't know they'd be buying new legislation to further reduce everyone's rights.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gaaark on Monday September 28 2015, @02:04AM
you see, they messed up: if they'd put Miley naked on that wrecking ball, they would have sold more records. They were just stupid... they should make music using porn stars and they would sell jillions! :)
The RIAA is good and gentle... the RIAA is my father, Luke... all is good, this is not the Miley you are looking for...
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @05:11PM
I thought they'd already tried that with Samantha Fox? [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Gravis on Monday September 28 2015, @02:06AM
I'm sure that's why not as many people are buying the latest trash from Mylie Cyrus.
leave Mylie alone! ಢ_ಢ
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday September 28 2015, @03:51PM
Those record executives should learn math. Paid streaming is all over the place, paid downloads are all over the place, "sales" of music are going up, along with profits.
The guy must think we're all stupid.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Sunday September 27 2015, @11:40PM
RIAA Chief Says RIAA is “Largely Useless” to Combat Music Piracy
They certainly haven't slowed music piracy in all the years they've been playing Gestapo.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @01:23AM
Gestapo is such an inappropriate term, I prefer calling them "overbearing scum sucking music Nazis"
(Score: 5, Informative) by Hairyfeet on Monday September 28 2015, @07:03AM
It also doesn't help their arguments when we get articles like this where Lyle Lovett sells millions, earns nothing [reuters.com]. This of course goes along with Meatloaf filing for bankruptcy thanks to his record label saying that Bat Out Of Hell I, a record that just FYI holds a fricking world record on longest time on the top 200, never made a dime, Cheap trick suing their record label because all those albums sold on iTunes? Yeah the record labels say "since it didn't exist when you made your records you get nothing" and of course the famous quote by Keith Richards way back in 1983 where he said they hadn't seen a cent from every album they made in the 60s since 1975.
I really have a hard time giving a single fuck about a scam that is designed by rich old white dudes to allow other rich old white dudes to rip off the guys that made the music and keep it locked behind a paywall for "forever minus a single day". If you want to see how badly they fuck kids just look at this chart by Steve Albini [negativland.com] which shows how 3 MILLION DOLLARS in sales equals the band OWING $14k! So if they all go broke...good, couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of scumbags.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @07:39AM
If only you didn't love Micro$oft... we could be best of buddies. </3
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday September 29 2015, @02:47AM
And folks wonder why I say ACs are useless and fucking retarded? I hated Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and I even wrote an article pointing out windows 10 was spyware, but because I won't drink the RM$ Koolaid and pretend Linux isn't a broken mess that means I "love" MSFT. BTW dipshit? Yeah here is your picture [penny-arcade.com] and you should really register an account so MSFT can send you a fruit basket, because its religious whack-a-doodles like you that have forever entrenched the idea that Linux is for basement dwelling losers,congrats numbnuts.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 30 2015, @09:42PM
Wait, you mean to say you didn't hate Windows ME?
And really, that rant didn't make you look good, but I'm sure you don't care.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday September 28 2015, @02:17PM
Right, this is why they would rather have a new law to turn the country into a police state.
Err, more of a police state. The kind where corporations run the police and the courts and the legislature.
Ok, fuck it, we already have that.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 2) by DECbot on Monday September 28 2015, @04:41PM
Well, we just haven't formalized it everywhere yet. I assume the proposal is to use tax dollars to transform ISPs/Google/Yahoo/Bing into *IAA content cops and additionally give the *IAA extrajudicial powers to enforce "copyright" and "punish" infringes.
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Finkus on Monday September 28 2015, @12:08AM
The notice and takedown system—intended as a reasonable enforcement mechanism—has instead been subverted into a discount licensing system where copyright owners and artists are paid far less than their creativity is worth.
I couldn't give less of a shit about the "copyright owners" if they aren't the artists themselves. I love how they're lumping themselves in with the people actually creating the content. Record companies are notorious for their exploitation of artists.
Join our Folding@Home team! [stanford.edu]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Francis on Monday September 28 2015, @12:39AM
They are, but there's a ton of people involved with creating those records that aren't leeches.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday September 28 2015, @02:20PM
If they sell their rights away to the leeches, they are no better, and get no sympathy from me.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday September 28 2015, @02:58PM
In other words, you're just looking for a way of rationalizing piracy and don't really care that not all the folks are fabulously wealthy.
Here's a hint, not everybody is independently wealthy and a lot of folks that love music don't have much choice about where to work other than to just give up on music completely. And I don't really think that's a particularly great outcome. Although, if the people who were working on Bieber's music could have quit, that would have been a great outcome.
(Score: 3, Informative) by mcgrew on Monday September 28 2015, @05:00PM
Here's a hint, not everybody is independently wealthy and a lot of folks that love music don't have much choice about where to work other than to just give up on music completely.
Nonsense, I know a LOT of very talented musicians, and all of them have day jobs. None "give up on music." Only one in twenty signed acts make any money at all. Meanwhile, not everyone is wealthy and can afford to "buy" music. I won't "buy" a movie, but I'll buy a DVD. I won't "buy" music online, I simply record it off of internet radio, capturing streams is built in to Windows and likely the other OSes as well. KSHE plays six full albums every Sunday, and the Home Recording Act of 1978 makes it legal to record them. I do buy indie CDs.
I won't pay for an ebook, nor do I charge for the ones I write, only physical copies. Ebook prices are ridiculous, same price as a paperback but you can't legally resell them or give them away. When you "buy" content rather than media you buy nothing. Meanwhile, paperbacks have printing, shipping, and warehousing costs, ebooks don't. It costs me fifty bucks a year to give away an unlimited number of ebooks. Retailers get a huge cut as well. A $2 ebook on Amazon nets the author 75¢
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Tuesday September 29 2015, @06:48PM
When it comes to music purchases. I prefer local music where I can buy the CD direct from the musician. I also get a chance to shake their hand, thank them for the show, and buy them a beer if they are inclined and the venue doesn't buy the musicians drinks.
Online, I buy most of my music from Bandcamp where money goes directly to the musicians.
The music economy is changing, We are helping to change it. Does this mean less 80's style stadium rock with their outrageous budgets and a focus on smaller acts? Maybe. I don't see this as a bad thing.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @02:43AM
I love how they're lumping themselves in with the people actually creating the content. Record companies are notorious for their exploitation of artists.
So if someone stole your phone, would you accept the explanation that you personally did nothing to create that phone, and besides, others can make much better use of it (perhaps even for altruistic purposes) than you were?
I think you would say, Dude. All that has *nothing to do* with the fact that you stole my phone.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @04:40AM
This has nothing to do with stealing.
But to respond to your specific example, which is completely different from what's actually under discussion, I would say that if you were to pretend that you somehow had a significant impact on the making of the phone, then you would be a liar. A liar just like the RIAA. Now, the different here is that the RIAA and their ilk actively screw over artists. So it's not just that they don't care about the best interests of the artists; they're actively harming *most* artists, and pretend that they're helping them.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by marcello_dl on Monday September 28 2015, @12:16AM
If they hate piracy so much they should have a couple words with
some perpetrators [gerryhemingway.com].
Now, I would like point out that I personally have nothing against copyright and even DRM, as long as it's uninstallable.
One wants to make others pay to hear his stuff? wonderful, free to do so.
The problem is, you should ALWAYS make others pay. Not like now.
Now the first hit is free, the second and the third, and so on, until that song is in your head.
THEN you gotta pay to own it, personal use of course, don't play it to your cousin in the hospital, you fucking monster.
This is entrapment and should be punished as such. Paywall stuff? always paywalled. Every fucking time. Three time private auditioning of samples allowed in regulated shops only. We don't want that paywalled stuff to leak to the neighbours.
It's the same as GMO. You can swim in it for all I care, one grain of GMO pollen in my field nearby and you pay damages. One scrap of non labeled GMO food in my plate and you pay damages.
Dear (supposedly non commie) governments, let the free market exist in the first place.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gman003 on Monday September 28 2015, @12:34AM
By definition, if you're accepting the deals, then they are priced at the market rate.
In a free-market economy, prices are not unilaterally set by the producers OR the consumer. Prices are set by the market. If a producer cannot make a profit at market rates, they go out of business. If a consumer cannot afford market rates, they go without.
The market changed. The barrier to entry has been bulldozed - where it once took tens of thousands of dollars in equipment to record an album, now you can do so for under $500. Copying music has always happened, and it's been getting cheaper and easier over time.
The entrenched producers have only barely adapted. They still try to charge $25 for a CD. They still want $15 for a digital album.
Sorry. The market has a new price. We aren't entirely sure what that price *is* yet, because non-market forces are distorting it, but it's not what they want it to be. I suspect that new price may be "free" - the music is an advertisement for the live shows and merchandise.
In other words, the RIAA is mad that capitalism works, and it's cutting into their profits. It would be funny if they weren't so influential.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @05:26AM
I thought yesterday's story on the Star Trek indie fan filming is quite germane to this thread.
I found it very impressive what they have been able to do with kickstarter funding. They have posted on their YouTube page all sorts of "behind the scenes" information where they show how they converted a warehouse into the stage for filming an extremely well done replica of the original starship Enterprise series. Looking at the work they have done, I find it very difficult to determine which set is which.
I found all their "behind the scenes" stuff to give me a lot more insight on what goes on in the real world in making such a film. What happens when people really get into and are doing what they enjoy doing becomes very obvious. Stuff like this simply does not come out of people when they are not "into it".
The only thing the actors seem to be lacking is age, pure and simple. I am not used to seeing such young people in such demanding positions of responsibility in the real world.
The soundtracks are incredibly well done.
And all this was produced with the determination and skill of a bunch of fans. My hat is off to them.
I believe stuff like this is a real demonstration that the cat is definitely out of the bag when it comes to anyone even thinking they have a monopoly to create film. There are a lot of really good people out there who no longer need someone else's permission to do their thing. There is no longer much use for the ones who simply get in the way, with their business model being to exact a fee for their blessing. A lot of people know how to use this new technology to enable their passion, and no longer need to submit to other people who own the means of production.
I am really glad to see it happening in my lifetime. As it has been said before, knowledge is power. These people have really reinforced that observation.
As far as I see, RIAA is just about as obsolete as the CRT. The old business models are about as germane as deflection yokes in today's environment. Trying to enforce digital media rights looks about as enforceable as trying to control the starting of fires when everyone who wants some can easily get a box of matches.
I believe most of the artists are already on the new game... the music they release is the advertisement for the tour. As far as movies go, make the downloads and streaming so convenient and hassle free that people will subscribe just to have their own access to the library. A lot of us were flocking to NetFlix with this model, however in doing this, the last thing vendors should do is place unskippable ads and annoyances in their stream. That makes about as much sense as McDonalds salting their fries with sand and putting rocks in the burgers. The customers will first spit and sputter, complain, then take their business elsewhere. Vendors should know that people do get interrupted a lot, and may have to see a movie like they read a book... It often takes me several months to go through a book, as the main time I have for book reading is when I am on the toilet. I would highly resent having ads in the book, especially unskippable ads, or being forced to repurchase the book every week. Stuff like that would only cause me to borrow and copy the damn book.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Hairyfeet on Monday September 28 2015, @07:13AM
The problem is they have been allowed to build monopolies and should be busted under anti-trust. Wanna know why any time a local band is played on the radio its ALWAYS a live performance, and its more rare than a lunar eclipse? Because DJs cannot played anybody that isn't signed and on the list and they will be FIRED if they try! This kind of shit should have been busted years ago, instead we had Ronnie Raygun deregulation allowing a couple of companies to own the airwaves from one side of the country to the other and they are all in bed with (if not outright owned) by the media corps.
While the net has made producing and getting content out there easier the radio is still where a lot of artists get "made" because the media corps can play the same tune dozens of times a day until it gets stuck in people's heads, and as long as a handful of gatekeepers are allowed to own the airwaves? This simply will not change.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 2) by penguinoid on Monday September 28 2015, @07:55PM
In a free market, if you don't like the price that one company is charging for a song, you can get that exact same song from infinitely many other companies, and also you know everything there is to know about that song.
RIP Slashdot. Killed by greedy bastards.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @12:35AM
The DMCA notice-and-takedown system is deliberately flawed to ensure that companies such as Google won't be sued into oblivion for serving as neutral intermediaries between users who infringe copyright, and as a side effect, the Internet is full of infringing content for free. Yet some fools still have the audacity to hate the DMCA even though the DMCA is the reason that piracy is rampant and ubiquitous. Fools don't remember the Internet before the DMCA, when hosting companies were routinely sued into oblivion if their customers posted unlicensed song lyrics on web pages.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @12:59AM
I have a better idea: Get rid of the shitty takedown notices that cause websites to lose safe harbor if they don't comply with them, but keep the actual safe harbor concept. When someone wants censorship, they have to go in front of a judge (for some checks and balances) and show that X content on Y website needs to be taken down, and the judge can decide whether that is the case or not. Website owners would then have to comply if so. Basically, anything is better than just tying website owners' hands and practically forcing them to censor whenever some fuck sends some DMCA takedown notice. Ignoring due process/checks and balances simply to make it easier to enforce copyright is disgusting and violates the principles to which this country is supposed to stand.
Just because the DMCA has one good idea (safe harbor) doesn't mean it doesn't have other bad stuff.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Francis on Monday September 28 2015, @02:57AM
Or how about make it an actual criminal offense to submit fraudulent take down requests. Right now there's basically no consequences for filing take down requests that haven't been adequately researched. The enforcement is the party that's had the content remove suing the party that sent the notice. Meanwhile the content's been taken down and frequently remains down until it's been settled.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @03:08AM
That would only solve the problem after the fact, and would more easily be compromised with vague language in the law. How about preventing them from censoring data before any checks and balances are involved? We need to have due process from the beginning while still keeping safe harbor.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Francis on Monday September 28 2015, @04:41AM
After the fact works just as well as before the fact if they know they're going to be personally accountable for it. The worst abuse at the present is automated. Knowing that they'd be personally going to jail for running such a scam would put a substantial damper on the practice.
There's going to be some overreach, but knowing that they're going to have to convince a jury not to throw them in jail is a step in the right direction.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Monday September 28 2015, @07:19AM
It wouldn't work, two words...Scooter Libby. All the corp would have to do is have plenty of scapegoats to throw away (and with the way they are trashing the economy it really wouldn't be hard to find plenty willing to take the chance) and it would be business as usual.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @08:11AM
No it doesn't, because it compromises our principles. Even if your plan worked out, I would reject it for that reason alone.
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday September 28 2015, @02:53PM
It doesn't compromise my principles. Sending people to prison for willful anti-social behavior is pretty much exactly what crimes against white collar crimes are. As it stands there's no penalty at all and the people who do this sort of thing are not going to be deterred by the fact that there's a small monetary fine attached. They have more money than anybody has any right to, a fine of a few thousand isn't going to do much good.
They need to actually spend a few days in prison for the behavior.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @03:09AM
"Derp. I hates the takedown notices! DMCA is shitty shitty shit shit."
You don't fucking get it, asshole. The takedown process is the due process, and compliance with takedown notices is a small price to pay for safe harbor under the due process of law. Without it, someone just goes in front of a judge and says your whole fucking site has to be taken down, because some joker posted some copyrighted shit in a comment somewhere, and you're responsible for infringement because you're the publisher of the comment. Thanks to the DMCA, you're not the publisher, you're not liable for your users' infringement, and your site stays up after you receive a takedown notice.
Do you remember copyright before 1998? Were you even alive before 1998?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @04:31AM
"Derp. I hates the takedown notices! DMCA is shitty shitty shit shit."
Nice straw man. You completely failed to respond to anything I actually said.
The takedown process is the due process
Nope. Due process would involve going in front of a judge at the beginning. The DMCA takedown process practically forces website owners to comply with censorship before any *actual* due process has taken place. Bullshitting companies have routinely abused the DMCA to censor things they don't like, or just plain made mistakes. It's possible for due process to take place later in the process, but that's not the same as it taking place from the very beginning.
This is censorship first, ask questions later. I want censorship to be as expensive as possible for those who want to do the censoring, and there needs to be actual checks and balances from the beginning of the process.
Without it, someone just goes in front of a judge and says your whole fucking site has to be taken down
That's exactly why I suggested we keep safe harbor and minimize the censorship to just the content that they want taken down, except they have make their case to a judge *first*. The entire site doesn't get taken down, but neither do we have DMCA takedown bullshit that encourages censorship before any due process takes place.
Do you remember copyright before 1998? Were you even alive before 1998?
I don't see your point. Are you saying "The situation was worse back then, so it's good now."? If so, that is logically fallacious. Just because X is worse than Y, that doesn't mean that Y is good. The DMCA takedown process is certainly not good. If that isn't what you're saying, you need to be more clear.
What I'm saying is that the concept of safe harbor is a good one. Let's keep that, and reject the bad ideas in the DMCA.
(Score: 2) by dyingtolive on Monday September 28 2015, @02:30AM
Well, awesome like how killing yourself alleviates the pain of getting your leg caught in a bear trap anyway.
Don't blame me, I voted for moose wang!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Monday September 28 2015, @01:17AM
But the DMCA grants these companies, such as Google, a so-called "safe harbor"—meaning companies only have to remove infringing content upon notice from rightsholders.
Oh poor baby! You wanted Google and Apple to play policeman for you? A free enforcement goon squad?
How bout we start charging the labels 500 bucks per unjustified take down, doubling each time they reach another thousand unjustified take downs. That would pretty much solve their take down problem.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @03:29AM
We have been noting that passing all this unenforceable law is going to have the unintended side effect of diminishing respect for the law.
I believe a significant number of us are under the perception that law is becoming a wish list the haves are foisting onto the have-nots. The elite bribe their congress into passing law representing their interests. and if necessary, even have our congress pass law to force us to buy it ( Obamacare ).
Meanwhile, the rest of us are seeing law the same way, except its not for us.
As each Congressman considers passing one-sided law, they also must consider the weakening effect it is having on the populace on respect of law.
The way this is going, its going to be as if we will have to provide Congress with a child's driver seat so they can pretend they are driving... but in all reality, their control shafts are not connected to anything.
They may wag their pens, but they will have to enforce the pen-wagging at the point of a gun.
When they do enough of that, the populace will tire of supporting so many enforcers of someone else's "rights" and will replace the government. Its happened many times in world history.
Remember what happened in Russia about 100 years ago? [alphahistory.com] It can happen here too. History has a tendency to repeat itself when the conditions repeat themselves.
Let me remind you that the elite dressing up in expensive clothing, and having people refer to them as "honorable" did not help out their situation at all.
People were pissed off. A lot of pretty powerful people suddenly found their pens powerless, and the only thing between them and a pretty pissed off horde was their own fleshy arms, which could not stand up long under that kind of imbalance.
All this "Obedience to Authority" went out the window as people released themselves from subordination to the elite. The elite suddenly found themselves with fewer and fewer people obedient to their orders.
A lot of property "rights" evaporated pretty quickly.
Look at the public approval ratings toward Congress. A good sized portion of the populace already views Congressmen as undulating bags of hot air. Whores. Pass law for money. Won't pay attention to the big things as they try to magnify some special interests "rights" to manipulate what is supposed to be a "free enterprise system" via overly broad patent protections and ever lengthening copyright.
I will back trademarks any day of the week, but somehow 99% of what I see patents covering is the rough equivalent of patenting construction of a hamburger.
Its nothing more than a special interest trying to enforce their own private monopoly. In my mind, the only monopolies that should exist in a free enterprise system is something known as a "natural monopoly" - an example being you set up a plant to manufacture light bulbs, and because you make so many, economies of scale kick in and you can make them better and cheaper than anyone else. Nothing says someone else can't make light bulbs, but that will happen if the entity holding the monopoly gets greedy and becomes so inefficient that someone else can take over the market - or ( like in the case of RIAA ), the market environment changes and the monopoly holder was too entrenched in older business models to change with it.
RIAA does not like to see themselves in this predicament, and neither did Kelo in the case of Kelo vs New London. [ij.org]. The Supreme Court of this nation has already decided it is OK to take private property. Don't shoot me. I am only the messenger. This is what the Law of the Land had to say when someone wanted someone else's stuff. Kelo's rights were disrespected. And now they expect us to honor rights when even our own governments highest court of the land will not?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VitalMoss on Monday September 28 2015, @02:24AM
RIAA is found to be "largely useless" in it's entirety. More at 11.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Monday September 28 2015, @05:08PM
The RIAA was formed to standardize the rolloff frequencies [wikipedia.org] of analog vinyl (originally shellac). When vinyl almost died, the RIAA's original purpose was nearly gone, although LPs are back - sales of LPs were higher than all streaming services combined last year.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by anarchy on Monday September 28 2015, @06:13PM
What's your source for that?
According to this:
http://www.digitaltrends.com/music/vinyl-revival-continues-q1-2015/ [digitaltrends.com]
Vinyl sales are up (and in a big way), but still only account for ~3.5% of all record sales and only ~2% of revenues. Streaming has to be higher than that, since in 2014 streaming revenues were greater than CDs.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Tuesday September 29 2015, @08:38PM
CBS News the morning before last.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 4, Insightful) by archfeld on Monday September 28 2015, @04:32AM
Not to be picky but maybe the record companies and artists have long been getting paid much more than they had a right to deserve. I will stipulate that 'people' today don't appreciate the idea of 'good' music being a rare thing in most of human history. Our ancestors made due with home made instruments and off-tune singing on the porch of the old homestead or the rare professional performance that you were very lucky to be able to witness. I am old enough to remember sitting on my great grandfathers stoop in rural Oklahoma listening to him and my great uncles strum the banjo, scrape the washboard and quite literally blow on the moonshine jug while singing along, poorly, with all the cousins to bluegrass tunes. Thru rose colored glasses those seem like the good old days...
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Monday September 28 2015, @01:25PM
Listening to your family and neighbors playing music on the porch is something you'll never get from the RIAA. What that sort of experience has going for it is that it's shared. Live performance has a human connection that no form of digital reproduction can capture. Also since it comprises so many elements, in a small batch, it stands out as special and unique in a way that a heavily produced piece, massaged and dumbed down for the lowest common denominator, can't.
Saturday night a performer & mask-maker friend of mine gave me two comp tickets to see a show in the Village he had made the masks for: a burlesque version of Cinderella [broadwayworld.com]. I had never seen a burlesque before and would never seek out such a thing, but hey free's free. And it was amazing. They seamlessly blended modern and classical elements of music & dance with acrobatics with a burlesque pastiche. The virtuosity of the performers was jaw-dropping. At one point one of the girls was doing acrobatics on a pole while singing full-throated opera. Who can do that? Stunning. And it's something you'll never see on HBO or in syndication because focus groups wouldn't get it and the bean counters wouldn't know how to sell it. And you could not create it in digital form because you'd miss the mist in the theater created by ginger-green tea scented atomizers, and the audience response around you, and the immediacy of the stage 3 feet in front of you.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Informative) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Monday September 28 2015, @01:37PM
What has "cheapened the legal demand for music" is the removal of artificial scarcity.
When I was growing up, you had to go to a gatekeeper at the mall (a "music store") and were allowed to purchase only certain recordings curated by other gatekeeper companies which were put on physical media for you. You had little choice. You paid whatever they charged or didn't get any music. You could, however, listen to the radio. Back then, radio wasn't 24/7 talk shows, and played music. It was free. You could also turn on television and watch Solid Gold or Casey Casum's top 10 countdown. (Casum fortunately died before the RIAA figured out he spent decades playing the top 40 songs in their entirety on his radio program. They probably would have locked him up in the same cell as the Pirate Bay guys. Anyone with a tape recorder could pirate all 40 songs each week!) So music has always in living memory been "cheapened" because you could listen to it any time you wanted to. If you liked something, you could buy it permanently.
Then the late 90s happened. A perfect storm of the CD format not being protected in any way, faster computers with CD-R drives, the Internet, and audio compression completely, totally, and irrevocably erased artificial scarcity forever.
Now the record companies are trying to put the genie back into the bottle, close Pandora's box, and put the snake heads back on Medusa. They're trying to introduce a new form of artificial scarcity, and it's not working. Nothing the RIAA members have tried since 1998 has worked. Legal actions haven't worked. DRM hasn't worked. Streaming hasn't worked - it's worked, but the amounts of money from it are such a pittance no one is happy. Even Apple Music is a dud so far. (Apple doesn't care, they just want to sell devices.) People seem to have always thought recorded music has little value.
Music sales are, right now, normal. Even if that's depressing. The RIAA members are assuming that the 80s and 90s are "normal" sales, but they were artificially inflated by format shifting. People bought cassettes instead of LPs, and CDs instead of other media, buying the same music several times. The RIAA members got greedy with multiple sets of remasters of their back catalogue artists. By the 2000s, the CD market crashed since everyone who wanted to format shift (even laggards) already had bought their music on CD, and the used CD market was flooded by older albums people sold after getting newer remasters. No wonder the music industry crashed so hard. Never again will format shifting happen like it did in the 80s and 90s. Anyone who wants new music buys the CD, or downloads the 320kbps rips from a warez site. (That is, I've heard these sites exist.) You NEVER EVER EVER hear this side of the story in the spin that the RIAA, its members, and the media put on the issue.
Funny the other day there was a story about kickstarter and other patronage deals - I think patronage may be the only thing left that works. You pay to get some music written and recorded up front. Otherwise it will never exist. Once you have the music you want, anyone can have it - you are sponsoring it to exist at all.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday September 28 2015, @04:14PM
how big disk do I need to have all the music and get it over with?
(Score: 3, Informative) by Aiwendil on Monday September 28 2015, @07:08PM
You don't need all music..
Let's assume you are going to live until you are 90 years old and that you are 20 years old today.
(90-20)*365,25*24*60 = 36,816,192
Music tends to compress to roughly 1MB per minute. So you would need about 40TB worth of space.. if you discount time spent sleeping it drops to about 26TB..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 29 2015, @01:58AM
With Sherman's grasp of the obvious, it's surprising that the RIAA has lasted as long as it has.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Wednesday September 30 2015, @02:01AM
This is a really late post.
I just left an event photographer's page [zendesk.com], which had the following business verbiage which I found rather interesting....
Ok... this guy laid it on the line.
However, people will agree to terms of business if they need it bad enough and there are not many alternatives.
My personal experience on my own creativity is that anyone hiring me insists my work be a "work for hire", but then expects me to work for $25 per hour.
I will offer to work for $25 per hour, but only if I retain rights to my designs. If they start hem-hawing about it being a "work for hire", I tell them I also offer a "work for hire" package for $200 per hour.
I get laughed out of the place.
If you have a "family to feed", I strongly suggest you take up wedding photography in lieu of engineering. Training is a helluva lot cheaper and the pay is better. If you get into porn photography, it might be more fun too.
We already have a terrible glut of engineers in the USA. I think how I am valued is a good indication of that.
I also ask myself why a company would hire me if they could get a hungry H1-B. The answer is obvious. Why would I pay for a movie if I can just as easily download it from the internet for free?
Our Congress will shut down stuff like Napster which threatens the return of investment of those who invested in the production of intellectual property, yet our Congress keeps approving H1-B which undercuts our pricing models for a return on investment we made in our education and training expenses.. both time and monetarily.
I know this is a late post, but I wanted to get this into this forum for subsequent searches on me or this subject.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]