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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, 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.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(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.