The RIAA Chronicles...Continued

[tigerman8u]

<double post>

[Tommyknocker]

In a recent pole, app. 1 year ago, 75% or more of senators and congressman were admitedly 1. alcholics 2.drug addicts 3. gay 4. a combination of the above.

A couple of quick questions. How many senators did they get into that guy from Poland, and what made them decide to get in him? Second, if you meant poll, who gathered the poll, why does it matter if someone had a substance abuse problem and was able to beat it, and whom he sleeps with?

[SquirrelDip]

@Tommyknocker: Good post!

[mysticgohan17]

The Register[/url]]Your 99c belong to the RIAA - Steve Jobs
By Andrew Orlowski in San Francisco
Posted: 07/11/2003 at 11:20 GMT

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish? Apparently not.

At an Apple financial analyst conference on Wednesday CEO Steve Jobs admitted that Apple makes no revenue from the online download service, the iTunes Music Store, that he launched in April. As iTMS is the leading download service, with 80 per cent market share (or so Jobs claimed), where's your 99 cents per song going?

Well, although it costs nothing for the record industry pigopolists, this small ragged army, to make a digital version of one of its hoardings available to hear, somebody must pay. It costs Apple real dollars to provide the hosting service that delivers that digital file to you, and to write the sophisticated software that delivers it. Meanwhile, almost all the cash is flowing back to the copyright holders. Who, when you last looked, were a dinosaur oligopoly of five record labels, desperately seeking a way to preserve their copyright cartel into a new century. They were down, and they were out: but Steve Jobs rode to their rescue.

"Most of the money goes to the music companies," admitted Jobs.

"We would like to break even/make a little bit of money but it's not a money maker," he said, candidly.

So now we have it on record: the music store is a loss leader. Jobs said Apple would pay its dues to the RIAA, then seek to make money where it could, from its line of hardware accessories. When the conversation turned to rivals such as eTunes and Napster, Jobs said: "They don't make iPods, so they don't have a related business where they do [make money]".

Running counter to several thousand years of basic human observation, Apple decided it could afford to control those points where we share music. It developed an opportunistic business with such compromises built in: a plan is to infect as many computers it could with restrictive DRM technology to allow us to rights we once took for granted. But why, you ask, is Apple helping an extinct, and unworthy industry back on its feet? Precisely why does this strike you as greedy, desperate and gasping? Let us explain.

DRM is non-negotiable
Digital media presents with a particularly nasty social problem: we love to share and enjoy our common culture, but we want the artists to be rewarded, too. But when the distribution medium is as careless and fluid as the Internet, dues are easily overlooked. We're simply too lazy to reward the artists. However, inspired by NGO-backed initiatives as the move to low-costs drugs, a global consensus is coalescing around the idea of something called "compulsory licensing".

This can take many forms, but if you want it simple, it means a cent on your income tax, or your blank CD purchases. Are you still standing? Good, for this creates a vast pool of wealth from which the artists can be rewarded. It's not alien to most people: we pay taxes everyday for roads we don't use, or healthcare for neighbours brats we'd rather see strangled. But that's how society works: with a bit of give and take. And if it means the artists gets a guaranteed income, that, we can generally agree, is a good thing. Fortunately the technology helps us here: because unlike most taxes, we'll be able to target the most popular. And all this can be done while preserving your anonymity, too.

Imagine such a model: you could click, download and play your favorite as much as you wanted, safely knowing that artists wouldn't be being ripped off, and that your clicks were earning them more money. Doesn't that make you feel warm and fuzzy?

Stripped to the core, compulsory licensing resolve two real social nasties without each side losing face. A flat tax is simply the easiest way of getting rid of the problem: we all get to swap music, and all the artists get paid. Now, problem: go away. And it's gone.

It doesn't make Steve Jobs feel warm and fuzzy, however, because he thinks he sees a real nasty, short-term business opportunity. Always a nervous kind of character, one to jump too early, Jobs sees a window of opportunity, by tying Apple to be the RIAA's slave.

When that 99 cents leaves your wallet, the RIAA monopoly swallows most of it, and the credit card companies swallow the rest. As the supplicant in this relationship, Apple is left holding the can.

While much of the received wisdom in both the music industries and technology industries see compulsory licenses in one form or another as inevitable, both Apple and RIAA are agreed on the short-term solution. One where the ancient copyright rules spin the money back to the pigopolists, and some sucker, like Apple, is left holding a brand of dubious (and soon to be extinct) value.

Alas it's Jobs who wants to be first - the first tech CEO - to offer himself up for a beheading. Having got so much right about personal computer ergonomics, it's initially surprising to find Jobs accepting a deal on such bad terms. At Wednesday's conference call, Jobs sounded positively happy that he was losing money on iTunes, so he could make the RIAA that little bit richer. But vanity plays havoc with even the finest minds.

At the end of the day it's for Apple's board to peg Jobs' peculiar exercises with such diametric labels as "excusable vanity" or "hopeless cause". But however you sliced it, and with the weight of history bearing pretty heavy, Steve Jobs' decision to give the RIAA a perpetual monopoly doesn't look so smart. As Jobs admitted, Apple is in a supplicant position in which it makes no money.

We like having Steve around, as the Jobs judgement is typically both coherent and devoid of technoutopian fantasies, but this could be fatal. ®

[Roundabout]

They're at it again, after a lull in lawsuits being filed, they aren't giving up... :P

RIAA embarks on new round of piracy suits
From CNET
1/21/04

The Recording Industry Association of America launched its largest wave of file-swapping lawsuits Wednesday, filing new copyright infringement suits against 532 currently unnamed individuals.

The suits are the industry group's first since an appeals court in December blocked its original strategy of identifying alleged file swappers before filing lawsuits by sending subpoenas to their Internet service providers. As a result, Wednesday's legal actions target hundreds of unnamed or "John Doe" computer users, whose identities will be added to the suits only after a court process likely to take several weeks.

"The process by which we identify defendants has changed, but the program has not," RIAA President Cary Sherman said in a press conference to announce the lawsuits. "Our message should be as clear as ever: We can and will continue to bring lawsuits against those who distribute music to millions of strangers."

The move comes after a month of mixed news for the RIAA, which had a set of legal setbacks--including the appeals court ruling on the subpoena issue--and some indications that the dampening effect of lawsuits on file swapping may be wearing off.

A survey the Pew Internet & American Life Project took in December found that just 14 percent of Americans said they had recently downloaded music from a file-swapping network, compared with 29 percent in a similar survey completed in May 2003.

In contrast, a report released last week by Internet monitoring firm The NPD Group found that music file swapping rose 14 percent between September and November, after falling substantially earlier in the year. The research firm attributed its findings in part to the lack of recent high-profile news about legal enforcement as well as a seasonal rise in music releases, but said it could not pinpoint specific reasons for the turnaround.

"Do people start to return to their old behaviors when they don't believe you're actively going to take them to task?" asked NPD researcher Russ Crupnick. "We don't have any specific data on that...so it is just a trend that bears watching."

The RIAA declined to comment on the studies, saying different groups used different methodologies and that it is impossible to compare them accurately. Its campaign had been undeniably successful in teaching people about the legal issues surrounding file trading, executives said.

"What we do know for certain is that awareness has shot through the roof," said Mitch Bainwol, the RIAA's new chief executive officer, citing the results of a study the industry group privately commissioned. "Prior to the launch of these legal actions, 35 percent of the population understood that (trading copyrighted music online) was illegal. Now, that percentage is in the mid-60s."

As the group is taking a new legal approach, instituted to comply with the December appeals court order, the new lawsuits are being filed in four batches against large numbers of anonymous individuals. Although suits are bundled around ISPs and are being filed in New York and Washington, D.C., the RIAA declined to name which Net service providers are involved.

Instead of names, the suits contain information on the Internet Protocol addresses of alleged file swappers. An IP address is a technological routing device assigned each Net surfer by their ISPs while online. The RIAA plans to ask judges to open a legal discovery process that will allow it to obtain the subscriber information associated with those IP addresses. The subscribers' names will then be added to the lawsuits.

The subscribers will be given a chance to settle before their names are officially added to the suits, Sherman said. However, the settlement amounts offered by the RIAA may be higher than in previous rounds, since the new process has raised legal costs, and the earlier suits have made it far less likely that a file trader could plead genuine ignorance of the law around the issue, the group said.

Wednesday's suits bring the total number of people in the United States sued by the RIAA for file swapping to 914. Sherman said 233 suits have been settled so far; another 100 suits reached settlement agreements, at an average of about $3,000.

Other music industry groups in Canada and Europe have indicated in recent months that they are likely to follow the RIAA's lead and begin filing suits against people swapping copyrighted music online in their own regions. None of these legal actions have yet occurred.

[BJ_M]

not sure how it would work out in canada as we pay a tax on blank cd's for some kind of purpose as this (i think - no one seems to know where the money goes or how its collected)

[smearbrick1]

What does the RIAA wish to gain from this? Dumb question... they want to take back what was once a cash cow for them. They want put the music back under their control... So they slap a few thousand people with lawsuits... that's only about 1/2500 of the people who actively use p2p. If they would take these resources spent on lawsuits and subpoenas and turn into a suitable alternative to p2p that the entire "music loving world" could embrace... also stop putting limitations on the music with DRM, I think most of their problems would cease. Will p2p ever disappear... no, I don't think so. As long there is a medium in which you can obtain something for free over paying for that item... no, it will never stop. Along with this, maybe they should be a little more selective in signing artists and promoting artists. Does anyone remember in the early nineties when the labels did a huge house cleaning and dumped artists who didn't sell? Everytime they sign an artist and spend money on album production/manufacturing and promotion... there is as 50/50 chance that album will bomb. Personally, I think it's great when this happens. I love the fact that Britney Spears' latest album is doing poorly, or Nick Lachey album is doing poorly. Kick these people to the curb!!!!