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Fluffeh writes:
"In a written statement to a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on the DMCA takedown system, RIAA CEO Cary Sherman informed lawmakers about the ongoing struggle against online piracy. 'All those links to infringing music files that were automatically repopulated by each pirate site after today's takedown will be re-indexed and appear in search results tomorrow. Every day we have to send new notices to take down the very same links to illegal content we took down the day before. It's like Groundhog Day for takedowns,' Sherman says.
Google, however, clearly disagrees with the RIAA, Katherine Oyama, Google's Senior Copyright Policy Counsel said 'The best way to battle piracy is with better, more convenient, legitimate alternatives to piracy, as services ranging from Netflix to Spotify to iTunes have demonstrated. The right combination of price, convenience, and inventory will do far more to reduce piracy than enforcement can.'"
(Score: 5, Insightful) by G-forze on Friday March 14 2014, @01:45PM
Not charging a hand and a foot for something that has been around for decades and costs cents to produce would also go a long way. But arguing with the RIAA about this is pointless. If copyright infringement were to actually dissappear (as a problem, if not completely), then the goons at RIAA would be out of a job. Now who thinks they would be working towards that goal?
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday March 14 2014, @01:54PM
" Security risk blocked for your protection
Reason:
This Websense category is filtered: Peer-to-Peer File Sharing. Sites in this category may pose a security threat to network resources or private information, and are blocked by your organization. "
Well, shit. So much for the first link. It's kind of funny that there was an article just posted about Tesla's business model and bypassing the middlemen; because the RIAA are just middlemen and should be bypassed by the artists.
So why don't more established and wealthy artists just let their contracts expire and go into business for themselves, especially since they've already beaten the odds? Are people so vain and lacking self-respect that they are willing to let Big Media pimp them out, dictating their band names and even their appearance in exchange for being on T.V.?
(Score: 5, Informative) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:43PM
Music contracts are amazingly complicated and impossible to escape, by design. I used to do tech support for a recording studio and spent some idle time reading some of the paperwork left lying around. The standard formula contract seemed simple at first, effectively granting a label exclusive rights to distribute your material for a period of time or a number of releases. However, the small print always included a couple of big sticks up the a*se that the more business minded of the musicians there would expound upon at length directly proportional to how intoxicated they were:
- Perpetual rights for the label to distribute and profit from any material submitted to them under the terms of the contract
- Prohibition of the artist to re-release any submitted material in any recorded form once the contract expires
Technically and legally, you can split from a label but you'd end up like Tina Turner post divorce - nothing left but your name and reputation. No legacy royalties, no back catalogue, even performance rights to your previous work would be a struggle to assert.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday March 14 2014, @03:13PM
A buddy of mine worked in the music industry for a while as a band manager. He described it this way:
"The recording company execs screw the label execs. The label execs screw the signing agents. The signing agents screw the band managers. The band managers screw the musicians. It's one giant line of people all screwing each other, except for the musicians, who just get screwed."
If you're good enough to make it as a musician, do everything you can to avoid signing a recording contract. That advance is never worth what it appears to be, and you're basically making yourself an indentured servant for the rest of your life. This bit [salon.com] is very revealing, and still quite true.
Vote for Pedro
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @03:26PM
The result of this gangbang is tracks like this my MC Front-a-lot: (Fairly SFW IIRC)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7ihtm8zCss [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by M. Baranczak on Friday March 14 2014, @03:44PM
Steve Albini, on the same subject:
http://www.negativland.com/news/?page_id=17 [negativland.com]
(Score: 2) by everdred on Friday March 14 2014, @04:40PM
> It's one giant line of people all screwing each other, except for the musicians, who just get screwed.
And they screw groupies, so they're happy.
(Score: 3, Funny) by isostatic on Friday March 14 2014, @06:29PM
A buddy of mine worked in the music industry for a while as a band manager. He described it this way:
"The recording company execs screw the label execs. The label execs screw the signing agents. The signing agents screw the band managers. The band managers screw the musicians. It's one giant line of people all screwing each other, except for the musicians, who just get screwed."
I thought the musicians screwed the groupies
(Score: 1) by paulej72 on Friday March 14 2014, @06:58PM
Unfortunately that was for fun not profit
Team Leader for SN Development
(Score: 1) by paddym on Saturday March 15 2014, @12:02AM
What I can't understand, is why aren't their hundreds of competitors rising up and competing to be the labels for new musicians? It would seem like any label willing to undercut and put musicians ahead of the bottom line would soon be the king of the hill.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @02:43PM
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting [wikipedia.org]n tracts.htm [soundonsound.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recoupment [wikipedia.org]
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/apr07/articles/co
http://www.toomuchjoy.com/?p=1397 [toomuchjoy.com]
It is really hard to feel bad for someone saying 'hey they are stealing from me' when they are stealing billions from their own employees. Thru the use of 'breakage', poor thru rates on paid to play, and best of all recoupment. They have even managed to turn the argument over onto google saying its not their fault the poor artists are not getting paid see its google who lets you find that music for free. When the record companies are the ones who are the real thieves. Do two wrongs make a right? No, but I sure do not feel bad for them that they will get their asses handed to them by the internet.
They are trying to put the genie back in the bottle and recapture the accounting model (ironically using streaming/radio). However, once you format shift to a convenient enough format you do not buy it again usually.
In some ways there are collectors/hoarders. People who amass huge collections of this stuff, books, music, movies, games, etc. Then there are consumers who enjoy it and then throw it away to buy again some other day. You see it shift back and forth. From people who are 'streaming is the best evar' too 'I have enough on my 2TB drive to last me the rest of my life'.
Consumers are razor blade buyers. Hoarders are straight razor buyers. (New site, I am inventing a new way of describing people I grow weary of cars analogies). For one you will be buying again a few weeks. The other will last you years but takes a bit of work to use properly.
RIAA does not want someone to buy a straight razor. They want you to buy it again and again and again.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @03:23PM
It's also hard to feel bad when the music industry bunch themselves are uploading songs to youtube too. Clearly they believe that a nonzero amount of sharing and free downloading/streaming is better than zero. Seems to me they are just quibbling over the amount of file sharing and their cut of the $$$$$$.
On a related note, seems to me Disney doesn't do that much "take down" on Youtube for those Mickey Mouse videos for kids. I guess they figure that if Youtube/Google really removes them all, Barney or Dora or something else would be very happy to fill the vacuum.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @01:46AM
I saw a counterexample for that.
Some YouTube user uploaded ALL(?) the episodes of KIM POSSIBLE (2002 - 2007)
Naturally Disney eventually found out and told YouTube to terminate the account which they did.
So I guess Disney is using the 'hook 'em while they're young' method of getting children to watch and like (a lot) Disney programming available for free on YouTube. When they are older (Kim Possible's target audience), they can surely afford to go out and buy it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Dale on Friday March 14 2014, @01:46PM
They complain about the work they have to do to protect their own interest? Isn't their whole argument for why they are needed is for their "value-added" services?
Google is not the internet police. They have automated systems that scan what is being made available by others. They are not responsible for filtering or doing the work for other groups' censorship goals.
(Score: 1) by deathlyslow on Friday March 14 2014, @02:09PM
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Friday March 14 2014, @02:13PM
The RIAA wants to shift the costs of defending their business model onto others: Google, the taxpayer, doesn't matter who. What amazes me is that Google is absorbing the costs to keep processing takedown requests, and the RIAA has the nerve to bitch about their small share of the costs.
Dear RIAA: if you don't like playing whack-a-mole, you can stop any time. When it costs too much to continue the fight, that is called "defeat." Deal with it.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:22PM
Google aren't doing this by choice, they're doing it because they lost the lawsuits the RIAA filed against them alleging complicity with the file sharers. Whether or not they are compelled do by the verdicts in those cases is open for argument, but I'm guessing the costs associated with their (token) attempts to do the RIAA's bidding are somewhat lower than the cost of fighting off another round of legal trolling.
As much as I hate the RIAA, you have to admire their ability to get other people to do all the work for them.
(Score: 2) by mrcoolbp on Friday March 14 2014, @03:26PM
Literally:
“Google places a numerical limit on the number of search queries we can make to find the infringing content and, as a result, we can only take down a tiny fraction of the number of infringing files on each pirate site, let alone on the Internet generally,â€
I read that as "Waaaaaaah, they won't let us use 4509TB/sec of their searching servers to do our bidding! WAAAAAAAAAH!"
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 1) by Rune of Doom on Friday March 14 2014, @05:26PM
But the MAFIAA has a right to make a profit from their business model! That's why they spent years buying legislation!
(Score: 2) by bucc5062 on Friday March 14 2014, @03:08PM
RIAA, not getting its way in the play ground goes running back to Mummy and Daddy Congress.
"Mummy, Daddy, they're not being nice to me,"
"Who my dear wateringhole..I mean child?"
"Google Mummy. They wont do exactly what I tell them to do. Fix it!"
"Suger Baby, it's not that simple, it is still somewhat a free country"
"I don't care. if you want me to still be nice and keep giving you my sugar, you better fix this"
RIAA is a sloit little child and they ran right to the people who will take care of them. I could just see those sage fonts of Bullshittery nodding their heads saying, sure we will. You still have that check for me..I mean for our campaign funds?
I remember some time back there was a P2P file sharing system that somehow hid the originators (seeders?) by bouncing the flow via multiple routes. I wonder what happened to that for it seems to me torrent is to vulnerable to detection.
I wonder if there could be a P@P distributed system that works similar to DNS. It maintains simple tables of file locations, hashed and encrypted. When I put out a request it gets passed to local tables and if it is not there they pass on the request till the file(s) are found, then the data is split, sent back via the hashed/encrypted address information such that the sender and the receiver have no idea who is who.
Not an advocate of infringing copyright, but I am also sick of seeing pricing that is piracy, and the attitude that what is yours is really mine. I'd prefer to pay, but I've also stopped buying music, movies, or anything digital but for rare occasions.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 2) by marcello_dl on Friday March 14 2014, @03:38PM
In fact what should google do if somebody makes a song named "tiananmen square" or "putin is a dictator" or "NSA spy scandal"? bring down all sites with those phrases?
Being Google I'd have replied "if you want to protect your stuff from piracy, just distribute it for a fee only, once you shove it into people ears with payola radio, movies and product placements you don't have any moral right to complain."
(Score: 1) by MrNemesis on Friday March 14 2014, @04:31PM
RIAA clearly wants google to become the internet police. Well, maybe not google necessarily, but someone has to be.
Perhaps google can shift to a whitelist model instead of a blacklist - every page they spider should be sent to the RIAA for vetting before it makes its way into the publicly available search index. This would have the colossal advantage that consumers would only be able to access the right kind of information, something that search engines are meant to do in the first place - the introduction of content whitelisting, combined with the neutralisation of connections that accept incoming connections, will effectively render obsolete peer-to-peer until it becomes impossible to conceptualise.
It's a win-win all round.
"To paraphrase Nietzsche, I have looked into the abyss and been sick in it."
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Friday March 14 2014, @01:51PM
I can totally attest to that. I haven't bought PC games for over 15 years, well before I entered University. Steam on Linux and I've spent more than $500 last year alone. Napster was hot when I was just graduating high school, but now I buy most of my music on line.
You know what I do pirate?
.
If I can get it on Netflix, or buy it on Steam or get it from Amazon/KOBO DRM free, that's what I do.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1) by G-forze on Friday March 14 2014, @02:05PM
A thousand times this. You could have been describing my situation, with the exception that I don't buy much music anymore, because I don't want to support the corrupt MAFIAA. If I buy, it's from indie bands not belonging to those organizations. Otherwise, I simply don't listen to the music.
If I run into the term "SJW", I stop reading.
(Score: 5, Informative) by mhajicek on Friday March 14 2014, @03:01PM
I buy music from mp3million, because their prices are reasonable and the files are DRM free. I buy games from Humble Bundle and Steam.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @03:38AM
I second the HumbleBundle approach. Just wish that they would stop putting up bundles requiring Steam or *shudder* Origin and get back to their roots - DRM free files
Am now waiting for lots of pdf, epub and games to add to my HB library. They rock. It is the right way to do it.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @03:17PM
The music industry survives despite the MAFIAA, not because of it.
My recent musical preferences have led me back to Drum and Bass. A workmate of mine pointed me towards Bassdrive.com and it's huge archive of free-to-download DJ sets in MP3 format. Although all the music is available through record labels, the producers in the community prefer to use the specialist labels and couldn't give a crap if DJs freely redistribute their work, just as long as it's mixed into their sets (thus preventing it's reuse by others) and they get the credit they deserve.
(Score: 1) by Mr_Flibble on Friday March 14 2014, @07:35PM
I used to buy a fair amount of music maybe £100 worth a month, I didn't download much, I usually listened to something online then bought the album sometimes all their albums.
Now I don't download anything, I also no longer buy music.
I stopped when the recording industry started being asshats.
That was many years ago at a rough guess due to their actions they have lost several thousand pounds of sales.
I suspect using riaa logic these lost sales are down to piracy.
If everyone just avoided anything to do with the riaa it would be highly amusing to watch.
Just because I suffer from paranoia doesn't mean people aren't out to get me.
(Score: 1) by Nobuddy on Saturday March 15 2014, @02:40AM
If I buy a game that is not Steam native, I immediately download the cracked version because I know it will run better. In some cases, it will run at all... I had zero to shit internet while I was contracting in Afghanistan. Always-online game were a bane to me (Batman Arkham games for Windows Live, anyone?). Even though I paid for them I had to run the pirated version to reliably use them. And they ran a hell of a lot smoother to boot.
Sneakernet piracy - have family download the files, put them on a USB stick and mail them to me. A 1Gb download took a week or more over there. i wished for dialup speeds, and DSL speeds were a pipe dream.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by andrew on Friday March 14 2014, @01:57PM
It's not surprising that this cunt puncher completely missed the overall theme of hope and rebirth in movie Groundhog Day. In the end Phil Conners realized he was a narcissistic parasitic asshole, changed his ways, and it's because of that he stopped repeating the same hellish nightmare of aday over and over. Like the RIAA, he was the cause of his own suffering.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by AgTiger on Friday March 14 2014, @03:37PM
I'm not seeing where the RIAA member corporations, or the RIAA executives are experiencing any suffering, and so the opportunity to learn from their mistakes seems to be absent.
More's the pity.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:13PM
It appears the RIAA are quixotically attacking the open nature of the Internet. Traditional law enforcement agencies and legal actions against individual sharers have been entirely unsuccessful in bringing about any meaningful reduction in copyright infringement, so the RIAA are leveraging Google's (and others) previous court case losses alleging complicity with file sharers to force them to take enforcement action. Between Google and the RIAA, they effectively control the entire process of discovery, assessment and action against copyright infringement - there is no law enforcement oversight or accountability in the process any more until after the fact when someone complains about their mistakes.
I'll take bets on the following two things happening in 2014:
1) Distributed search engines like Yacy will see a significant increase in their usage, sophistication and resilience as centralized search engines are forced to perform more and more blocking of the content people want.
2) The RIAA will come out against 3D printers saying they can be used to print illegally obtained music.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @02:38PM
The RIAA doesn't care to (just) stop piracy. They want to stop all competition. There is plenty of evidence for that. One example is just look at the fact that, outside the Internet, these collection agencies have made it difficult for restaurants and other venues to host independent performers without paying them a high extortion fee under the pretext that someone 'might' infringe. Even bakeries are afraid of allowing children to draw custom drawings on their birthday cakes because they have been threatened by these collection agencies. Some child might draw Spongebob on their cake and that would be infringement. The horrors!!! and even if hosting independent performers is technically legal the threat of an expensive lawsuit is enough to deter most venues from hosting them. This hurts the restaurant, it hurts the artists, it hurts consumers, and it only helps the selfish parasite middlemen.
(Score: 3) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @02:54PM
Keep in mind that the RIAA is effectively an amalgam of the various music distribution labels that are already screwing the crap out of the artists who make their money in the first place. I was merely commenting on their methods, I took it as read that everyone knew it's all about these asshats taking personal possession of someone's money through any means available.
I wholeheartedly agree with you that fear of reprisals against copyright infringement has become paranoia of epic proportions and is causing irreparable damage to even the simplest forms of human culture. I worry that one day I'll get arrested and imprisoned on the way home for retelling a joke I heard in the office that turns out to have been written by a stand-up comedian under contract with Humour Inc.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @09:40AM
Fiddlers Crossing in Tehachapi, CA (folkie music venue) is one place I know of which specifies that all acts must perform their own compositions or traditional tunes; nothing that is still under copyright by someone else.
-- gewg_
(Score: 1) by AsteroidMining on Friday March 14 2014, @02:34PM
In my experience, nothing that anyone associated with RIAA says should be believed in the slightest.
(Score: 3) by zim on Friday March 14 2014, @02:43PM
I want them to try selling me a product i want at a reasonable price and stop trying to tell me what i can do with stuff i bought.
We all got wants... And i give as much of a fuck about the RIAAs wants that they do about mine.
And i bet google feels the same way.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by koreanbabykilla on Friday March 14 2014, @02:44PM
I didnt even know this was a thing anymore. Using a search engine to find shit to pirate has been a horrible way to do it since the early 90s. Maybe its just a big circle and everyone will be using leech accounts on FTP servers again soon.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @05:06PM
leech accounts on FTP servers again soon
It's 2014, I hope they're at least using SFTP.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 14 2014, @05:39PM
So, what would be the preferred way? Torrent search sites are terrible for obscure shows or anyone with special needs (such as subtitles, or a different language, or both); and closed-door forums are by their own nature limited to host a small subset of popular or subject-specific content. Is there another way I'm missing?
For all the malware-ridden, insert-your-phone-number pages found through a search engine, at least you have the indexing and filtering power of Google's engine, and a well refined search can find the desired payload. Heck, sometimes the RIAA shutdown notice is the best way to find a working URL among an ocean of crappy results.
(Score: 1) by Chromodynamics on Friday March 14 2014, @06:00PM
Average people. These people don't download shows or movies. They look for streaming sites. The low quality is perfectly acceptable to them. I see this stuff being shared on facebook often.
(Score: 1) by koreanbabykilla on Friday March 14 2014, @06:34PM
I swear I thought average people just bought music now. crazy.
(Score: 1) by bgm on Saturday March 15 2014, @01:20AM
Google caches magnet links, making it a rather decent TPB mirror, with a better search engine than TPB.
(Score: 1) by mwvdlee on Friday March 14 2014, @03:06PM
I always thought it was the kid with the mallet playing Whack-a-mole.
Apparently, it's the mole jumping into the mallet over and over again, chasing the mallet through the holes, with the RIAA trying to move the mallet away from the mole unsuccesfully.
It's like a thief trying to stop theft by telling the victim to stop handing over money whenever the thief points a gun at him.
(Score: 2) by wantkitteh on Friday March 14 2014, @03:36PM
Interesting interpretation, I like it! Slightly more upbeat than my reading; that the RIAA decided a hammer wasn't the right tool for the game and were about to take to orbit for the nuclear strikes to start.
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday March 14 2014, @03:41PM
Whack-a-mole is profitable. Now Google has lobbyists too [theverge.com] and (probably) ties to 3-letter agencies. I'm not saying it's any better; but it sounds like the RIAA is getting a taste of its own medicine.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by krishnoid on Friday March 14 2014, @06:12PM
The whole music production chain seems to now be in the hands of the musicians themselves:
I would think a musician could find individuals to help with the parts of this that they don't want to do.
If an individual wants to find good music in any genre and are willing to go on a forum, ask a few friends, and search on google, where does the RIAA have to be part of any of this process?
Other than marketing, which now puts the artist and song in your face instead of having you spend some time over a single weekend to find your own sources for music you like, does anyone need anything from them anymore, if what you're interested in is the actual music and not the belief that you're listening to what everyone else is listening to -- which I'm not discounting, just considering as another factor in their continued relevance?
If you consider it another way, if Google said they could absolutely guarantee compliance by stripping out all references to RIAA-signed music from their search results, and did so for a couple months so people could find other sources for music and go directly to the artists they were interested in, would that finally relegate the RIAA to second-class status?
P.S. I was making this argument to my friends before a Cyndi Lauper concert recently, and between songs during the concert, she actually reiterated my argument, describing how music can now be produced in 'yeh bedroom' with Pro Tools.
(Score: 1) by krishnoid on Friday March 14 2014, @06:26PM
Sorry, forgot a few, mentioning them for completeness:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 15 2014, @03:26AM
Missing something?
Marketing == RIAA / Youtube
Appearance of being the music everybody else is listening to (popularity) == RIAA / Youtube
Look at the porn industry. There are now several sites anyone can visit to get free decent porn with enough variety to keep you going for ages. On a page with tantalising links to much better porn at cheap rates. It works. While doing tech support for a small site the numbers are staggering. Yes, lots of people leech from the free site and hey lots of people go to the paid sites. Win / Win. Come on RIAA, here is your business model - it works!
if Google said they could absolutely guarantee compliance by stripping out all references to RIAA-signed music from their search results, and did so for a couple months so people could find other sources for music and go directly to the artists they were interested in, would that finally relegate the RIAA to second-class status?
In this day and age they probably would see a loss in sales as the younguns fail to find the music of the week