DESTROY the music industry's topics - tribe.net

Record Industry Goes After Personal Use

2007-12-31T05:08:16Z

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/28/AR2007122800693.html

Despite more than 20,000 lawsuits filed against music fans in the years since they started finding free tunes online rather than buying CDs from record companies, the recording industry has utterly failed to halt the decline of the record album or the rise of digital music sharing.

Still, hardly a month goes by without a news release from the industry's lobby, the Recording Industry Association of America, touting a new wave of letters to college students and others demanding a settlement payment and threatening a legal battle.

Now, in an unusual case in which an Arizona recipient of an RIAA letter has fought back in court rather than write a check to avoid hefty legal fees, the industry is taking its argument against music sharing one step further: In legal documents in its federal case against Jeffrey Howell, a Scottsdale, Ariz., man who kept a collection of about 2,000 music recordings on his personal computer, the industry maintains that it is illegal for someone who has legally purchased a CD to transfer that music into his computer.

The industry's lawyer in the case, Ira Schwartz, argues in a brief filed earlier this month that the MP3 files Howell made on his computer from legally bought CDs are "unauthorized copies" of copyrighted recordings.

"I couldn't believe it when I read that," says Ray Beckerman, a New York lawyer who represents six clients who have been sued by the RIAA. "The basic principle in the law is that you have to distribute actual physical copies to be guilty of violating copyright. But recently, the industry has been going around saying that even a personal copy on your computer is a violation."

RIAA's hard-line position seems clear. Its Web site says: "If you make unauthorized copies of copyrighted music recordings, you're stealing. You're breaking the law and you could be held legally liable for thousands of dollars in damages."

They're not kidding. In October, after a trial in Minnesota -- the first time the industry has made its case before a federal jury -- Jammie Thomas was ordered to pay $220,000 to the big record companies. That's $9,250 for each of 24 songs she was accused of sharing online.

Whether customers may copy their CDs onto their computers -- an act at the very heart of the digital revolution -- has a murky legal foundation, the RIAA argues. The industry's own Web site says that making a personal copy of a CD that you bought legitimately may not be a legal right, but it "won't usually raise concerns," as long as you don't give away the music or lend it to anyone.

Of course, that's exactly what millions of people do every day. In a Los Angeles Times poll, 69 percent of teenagers surveyed said they thought it was legal to copy a CD they own and give it to a friend. The RIAA cites a study that found that more than half of current college students download music and movies illegally.

The Howell case was not the first time the industry has argued that making a personal copy from a legally purchased CD is illegal. At the Thomas trial in Minnesota, Sony BMG's chief of litigation, Jennifer Pariser, testified that "when an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." Copying a song you bought is "a nice way of saying 'steals just one copy,' " she said.

But lawyers for consumers point to a series of court rulings over the last few decades that found no violation of copyright law in the use of VCRs and other devices to time-shift TV programs; that is, to make personal copies for the purpose of making portable a legally obtained recording.

As technologies evolve, old media companies tend not to be the source of the innovation that allows them to survive. Even so, new technologies don't usually kill off old media: That's the good news for the recording industry, as for the TV, movie, newspaper and magazine businesses. But for those old media to survive, they must adapt, finding new business models and new, compelling content to offer.

The RIAA's legal crusade against its customers is a classic example of an old media company clinging to a business model that has collapsed. Four years of a failed strategy has only "created a whole market of people who specifically look to buy independent goods so as not to deal with the big record companies," Beckerman says. "Every problem they're trying to solve is worse now than when they started."

The industry "will continue to bring lawsuits" against those who "ignore years of warnings," RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy said in a statement. "It's not our first choice, but it's a necessary part of the equation. There are consequences for breaking the law." And, perhaps, for firing up your computer.

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blogger shut down for criticising RIAA

2007-06-16T07:11:10Z

http://torrentfreak.com/ifpi-board-member-threatens-university-lecturer-for-riaa-criticism/

"There are very serious allegations made in this anti-RIAA link on your blog, and I don’t think its appropriate that you link to them."

"take down links from your site that promote this hatred of the recording Industry, because the assumption is that by linking to them that you support the extreme view heralded."

"It expresses opinion, it’s not factual. If you persist then I shall make a formal complaint to the University."

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

The RIAA wants the power to lie.

2007-04-14T01:38:58Z

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pretext7apr07,1,1936238.story?coll=la-headlines-business&ctrack=2&cset=true

Recording, movie industries lobby for permission to deceive
Hollywood wants to be exempt from a bill that would ban the use of 'pretexting' to get data.
By Dawn C. Chmielewski and Marc Lifsher, Times Staff Writers
April 7, 2007

SACRAMENTO — The music and movie industries are lobbying state legislators for permission to deceive when pursuing suspected pirates.

The California Senate is considering a bill that would strengthen state privacy laws by banning the use of false statements and other misleading practices to get personal information. The tactic, known as pretexting, created a firestorm of criticism when detectives hired by Hewlett-Packard Co. used it last year to obtain phone records of board members, journalists and critics.

But the Recording Industry Assn. of America and the Motion Picture Assn. of America say they sometimes need to use subterfuge as they pursue bootleggers in flea markets and on the Internet.

In recent letters to state Sen. Ellen Corbett (D-San Leandro), the trade groups said the proposed legislation was written too broadly and could undermine anti-piracy efforts. They said investigators sometimes pose as someone else to obtain bootlegged CDs or movies and to break into online piracy rings.

"Basically, we want criminals to feel comfortable that who they're dealing with is probably some other criminal and let us in on what's going on," said Brad Buckles, the RIAA's executive vice president for anti-piracy. "We're not talking about trying to go in and get customer information. In no case have we ever tried to do that."

The RIAA proposed changes to the piracy bill that raised alarms among consumer advocates. The trade group asked that any owner of a copyright, patent, trademark or trade secret be able to use "pretexting or other investigative techniques to obtain personal information about a customer or employee" when seeking to enforce intellectual property rights.

"I don't see why the recording industry shouldn't have to follow the same laws that everyone else follows," said Fred von Lohmann, senior staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group in San Francisco. "It appears they want to make the loophole so big that nobody else has to follow the law, either."

Hollywood succeeded in killing a similar bill last year. Other opponents of the bill included the California Chamber of Commerce and the Direct Marketing Assn.

While applauding the bill's intentions, the movie and music industries said the measure would limit their methods for gathering evidence to share with law enforcement.

"This legislation could be construed to prevent MPAA's anti-piracy department and contract investigators, who gather evidence to bring legal actions against criminals who counterfeit and steal motion pictures and other works, from employing certain long-employed techniques to obtain information," the movie association wrote in a letter obtained by The Times.

The association also said those techniques "could include posing or portraying an individual personality as part of an ongoing investigation."

Buckles said the recording association had never, nor would it ever, assume someone's identity to access that person's phone or bank records. Rather, he said, the group was seeking assurances that its investigators would not run afoul of state privacy laws when they hide their industry connection from traffickers of pirated or counterfeit music.

The industry's proposed amendment is unlikely to get anywhere when it comes up for an initial hearing in the California Senate's Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

Sen. Corbett, the bill's author, chairs the committee and is unlikely to accept what's known in legislative parlance as a "hostile amendment." An attorney and consumer protection advocate, Corbett should receive solid backing from the two other Democratic attorneys on the five-member Judiciary Committee: Sen. Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) and Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento).

Kuehl, a former child actor who played Zelda in the popular 1960s sitcom "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis," said she shared concerns over piracy. But she said she wasn't sure that the amendment was the best way to deal with the problem.

"I think it's going to be a very hard go for the RIAA on this because the underlying principal is so visceral to everybody," she said. "I don't want people calling up and pretending to be me to get my personal information. They'll have a hard time convincing people that piracy is so different that they ought to be allowed to engage in these otherwise illegal acts."

Chris Hoofnagle, a privacy attorney at UC Berkeley's Samuelson Law, Technology & Public Policy Clinic, said there was no rational reason to exempt one industry from pretexting laws, especially when information can be legally obtained through subpoenas and other means.

"The whole point of these pretexting bills is to rein in private law enforcement that is not accountable to the public or to normal rules," Hoofnagle said. "There isn't much sense in allowing an entire industry to play with a different rule book."

*

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EMERGENCY ALERT: F.C.C MEETING ON MEDIA CONSOLIDATION 4/29/07 TAMPA FLORIDA

2007-04-06T19:31:16Z

EMERGENCY ALERT: F.C.C MEETING ON MEDIA CONSOLIDATION 4/29/07 TAMPA FLORIDA
Category: News and Politics

Official FCC Hearing on
Media Ownership
Monday, Apr. 30, Tampa, Fla.

http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=tampa

Tampa Speaks Out
OWNERSHIP HEARING 101:

Learn the FCC Basics
The FCC's rulemaking process and how you can make a difference.

What Should I Say?
Tips for testifying before the commissioners.

Four Points to Remember
Some important points to take to the hearings.

Read About the FCC's 'National Disgrace'
The FCC has abandoned its mandate to ensure diversity in U.S. media.

Recursos en Espanol

The FCC is holding its fourth official public hearing on media ownership issues in Tampa, Fla.:

Date: Monday, Apr. 30, 2007
Time: TBD (likely late afternoon)
Location: TBD

The hearing will feature panel presentations by local broadcasters and community leaders with opportunities for public comment after.

This public hearing is one of the public's few chances to speak out against Big Media before FCC Chairman Kevin Martin moves to lift the last significant limits to runaway media consolidation.

Martin has promised to "hold public hearings in diverse locations around the country to fully involve the American people" in the FCC's review of media ownership rules. The Tampa event will be the fourth of "half a dozen" proposed hearings.

At the first official hearing, held in Los Angeles, more than 1,000 members of the public attended and overwhelming expressed their opposition to any rule changes that would let Big Media companies swallow up more local outlets. Similar sentiments were expressed in Nashville and Harrisburg, Pa..

..

The F.C.C. wants to change the rules to let multibillion dollar media companies like News Corp, Viacom, Disney and Time Warner get even bigger. They're preparing to let giant media corporations buy up more local TV channels, radio stations and newspapers across America.

http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=fcc
Learn about the FCC's rules
..

The largest media conglomerates rake in billions by owning TV stations, cable channels, newspapers, radio stations, publishing houses and more.
Check out our interactive ownership chart
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/chart.php
What's at Stake
http://www.stopbigmedia.com/=learn

The Federal Communications Commission is once again taking up the issue of media ownership and deciding how media ownership rules should be changed. As FCC Commissioner Michael Copps has warned: "They screwed it up once. Believe me, they're 100 percent capable of screwing it up again."

That's why it's crucial for the public to weigh in now. Here's what's at stake:

* Big Media stifle viewpoints: If a corporation like News Corp. can buy multiple media outlets in a single city or town, it gains immense influence over what information is available. Consolidated corporations strip local newsrooms of staff, while pushing aside competing points of view. That means less diversity of voices and a narrower range of debate.

* Big Media don't serve local communities: In exchange for their free and exclusive use of the public airwaves, broadcasters such as Sinclair are supposed to serve the public interest. Yet they frequently ignore important local issues, pander to sensationalism, provide biased coverage of elections, and stifle diverse viewpoints.

* Big Media ignore diversity: Corporate media conglomerates like Tribune Company are more concerned with profits than responsible programming. Coverage of issues important to people of color, the working class and rural citizens are squelched or ignored because these people aren't advertisers' target audiences.

Without ownership limits, giant national corporations can buy up local stations and newspapers, eliminate diverse, local and independent programming. If the FCC is serious about fostering localism and diversity, it must enact protections against consolidated corporate ownership.

For decades, the biggest media companies have had the ear of the FCC and Congress, while the public has been ignored. As the FCC rewrites is ownership rules and Congress debates legislation that will shape the entire media system for years to come, it's time our policymakers listened to the public, not just the corporate lobbyists.
Costs of Consolidation
In 2003, the Federal Communications Commission attempted to loosen media ownership rules that would have unleashed a massive wave of corporate consolidation of radio, television and newspapers entities across the country.

The courts sent these rules back to the FCC for a rewrite. Now, as the FCC embarks upon writing new rules, the stakes are even higher:

* A handful of media companies dominate what you watch on television. As their influence spreads to other outlets, the diversity of what you see diminishes.

Five media conglomerates — Viacom/CBS, Disney, Time Warner, News Corp. and NBC/GE — control the big four networks, 80 percent of the primetime television market share, most cable channels, as well as vast holdings in radio, publishing, movie studios, music, Internet and other sectors. (To learn more, visit StopBigMedia.com's ownership charts)

Minority ownership — a crucial source of diverse and varied viewpoints -- has declined significantly over the past decade. Today, only 3.3% of television stations are minority-owned.

* Media conglomerates now stand to make incredible new profits from the public airwaves with no accountability to the public interest.

Over the next few years, television conglomerates will begin broadcasting digitally. This means that in the space it used to take to broadcast the local affiliate of ABC, NBC or CBS, these corporations will now be able to fit six or more stations — ABC-1, ABC-2, and so on. This opens up countless new revenue streams, and indeed, plans are already in the works to have infomercial-driven new channels pump up corporate profits.

The total worth of the publicly owned airwaves that U.S. broadcasters utilize has been valued at $367 billion -- more than the GDP of many nations — but the public has never been paid a dime in return. Now, these conglomerates claim they can't afford to be accountable to the public interest.

* Media consolidation has stifled independent voices and threatened public access to information.

Consolidation is killing local media choices. Since 1975, two-thirds of newspaper owners have disappeared, and one-third of television owners have vanished. There are less than 300 unique owners of the nation's 1,500 daily newspapers, and more than half of all U.S. markets are dominated by one paper.

Moreover, the number of radio station owners has plummeted by 35 percent since 1996, when ownership rules were gutted. That year, the largest radio owners controlled fewer than 65 stations; today, radio giant Clear Channel alone owns over 1,100.

* If the current ownership rules are eliminated, local communites will be turned into "company towns," where one media conglomerate dominates the public discourse.

Big Media wants the FCC to lift the restrictions on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership and allow one company to own two or more television stations in a single market. If the rules are changed, the largest conglomerates will immediately begin swapping newspaper and television properties. Then the radio giants like Clear Channel will begin selling off their already consolidated radio holdings for billions to the other dominant companies, creating local and regional media fiefdoms.

If FCC Chairman Kevin Martin tries to push through changes similar to those rejected in 2003, one company could potentially own the major daily newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same town. Once the digital television transition is completed in 2009 – allowing stations to broadcast multiple signals – one company could control 12 or even 18 television channels in a single city.

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Apple: Record Labels Should Drop DRM

2007-02-08T12:57:27Z

Apple: Record Labels Should Drop DRM
http://finance.myway.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt.jsp?section=news&feed=ap&src=601&news_id=ap-d8n4jeq80&date=20070206

Tuesday February 6, 9:19 PM EST

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple Inc. indicated it would open its iTunes store to other portable players besides its ubiquitous iPod if the world's major record labels abandoned the anti-piracy technology that serves as the industry's security blanket.

Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, made the case for abolishing the protections known as "Digital Rights Management," or DRM, in an open letter posted Tuesday on the Cupertino-based company's Web site. He also explained why Apple had decided against licensing its own DRM technology, known as "FairPlay," as an alternative method for making iTunes accessible to all portable players.

Like many things the trendsetting Jobs does, his call for change created an almost immediate buzz.

Supporters hailed Jobs for leveraging Apple's growing clout as one of the world's largest music sellers in an attempt to remove restrictions that annoy many consumers. Critics, though, derided the message as a disingenuous maneuver designed to soften a recent backlash in Europe, where iTunes' incompatibility with other portable music devices besides the iPod has been branded has anticompetitive.

Jobs' essay, dubbed "Thoughts on Music," cited the recording labels' anti-piracy technology as the main reason music sold through iTunes can't be transferred to other portable players besides the iPod.

Those same DRM protections also prevent the iPod from playing music bought from many other competing online stores.

If not for the DRM safeguards, Jobs asserted that Apple would be able to create a more flexible system that would allow iTunes music to work on other devices, such as Microsoft Corp.'s recently introduced Zune.

Jobs suggested that consumers unhappy with the status quo should urge the world's four largest labels — Universal Music Group, EMI, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — to sell their online catalogs without the DRM restrictions. Those four labels distribute more than 70 percent of the world's music.

"Convincing them to license their music to Apple and others DRM-free will create a truly interoperable music marketplace," Jobs wrote. "Apple will embrace this wholeheartedly."

EMI began selling a handful of songs in an MP3-file format that isn't shielded and has been encouraged by the consumer response to the experiment, spokeswoman Jeanne Murphy said. She declined to comment on Jobs' call to end all DRM protections.

"I think Steve is finally saying something he has wanted to say for a long time," said Forrester Research analyst James McQuivey. "He is not saying this just to grandstand. He really thinks this could open up the market."

The tremendous reach of the iTunes store makes it difficult for the music industry to ignore or ridicule Jobs.

Since its debut nearly four years ago, iTunes has sold more than 2 billion songs, mostly for 99 cents apiece. With sales of about 5 million songs per day, Apple now rank ranks behind only Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. and Target Inc. as a music retailer.

Apple's music sales have flowed largely from iTunes' compatibility with the iPod, whose immense popularity prompted the company to recently drop "computer" from its name. With about 90 million iPods sold so far, Apple accounts for about 70 percent of the portable players on the U.S. market.

That dominance has convinced some observers that Apple won't mind at all if the iPod remains the only device designed to play songs bought at iTunes.

Jobs "could open that platform up tomorrow if he really wanted to," insisted Mike Bebel, chief executive of Ruckus Networks, a Herndon, Va., service that offers more than 2.5 million DRM-protected song titles to college students. "It's great PR (for Jobs) and a nice way to turn the tables, but it's not really working toward a solution."

In his Tuesday posting, Jobs said Apple can't risk opening up the iTunes store to other portable players as long as DRM technology remains in place.

Going down that road would require licensing its FairPlay technology, requiring sensitive secrets to be shared, Jobs wrote. "And history tells us those secrets will leak. The Internet has made such leaks far more damaging, since a single leak can spread worldwide in less than a minute."

ITunes' incompatibility with other music players has drawn fire in Europe. Over the past eight months, consumer rights and protection groups in Germany, France, Norway and the Netherlands have lodged complaints against Apple.

The attacks have to be especially painful for Jobs, who has long positioned Apple's Macintosh computers as a more consumer-friendly alternative to the personal computers that depend on Microsoft's dominant Windows operating system, said Chris Castle, a music rights lawyer.

Europeans are "painting (Jobs) out to be as bad as Bill Gates and that is not exactly what he wants," Castle said. "Steve is used to being seen as a the cool guy."

Raising a bit of irony in his dissertation, Jobs noted that three of the four largest music labels are owned by European interests.

Even if iTunes remains incompatible with other players, Jobs argued that most consumers can still easily load virtually all of their digital music on just about any computing device that they desire.

That's because most consumers already own a library of CDs unencumbered by DRM restrictions or acquire other music files, either legally or illegally, that aren't copyright protected.

Based on Apple research released for the first time Tuesday, Jobs estimated that just 22 out of every 1,000 songs stored on an iPod were purchased from iTunes.

———

On The Net:

Jobs' essay: http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughtsonmusic

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Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion

2007-01-31T15:10:34Z

Jan 31, 12:46 AM EST

Teen Accuses Record Companies of Collusion

By JIM FITZGERALD
Associated Press Writer
Technology Video
Advertisement
Buy AP Photo Reprints

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) -- A 16-year-old boy being sued by five record companies accusing him of online music piracy accused the recording industry on Tuesday of violating antitrust laws, conspiring to defraud the courts and making extortionate threats.

In papers responding to the record companies' lawsuit, Robert Santangelo, who was as young as 11 when the alleged piracy occurred, denied ever disseminating music and said it's impossible to prove that he did.

Santangelo is the son of Patti Santangelo, the 42-year-old suburban mother of five who was sued by the record companies in 2005. She refused to settle, took her case public and became a heroine to supporters of Internet freedom.

The industry dropped its case against her in December but sued Robert and his sister Michelle, now 20, in federal court in White Plains. Michelle has been ordered to pay $30,750 in a default judgment because she did not respond to the lawsuit.

Robert Santangelo and his lawyer, Jordan Glass, responded at length Tuesday, raising 32 defenses, demanding a jury trial and filing a counterclaim against the companies that accuses them of damaging the boy's reputation, distracting him from school and costing him legal fees.

His defenses to the industry's lawsuit include that he never sent copyrighted music to others, that the recording companies promoted file sharing before turning against it, that average computer users were never warned that it was illegal, that the statute of limitations has passed, and that all the music claimed to have been downloaded was actually owned by his sister on store-bought CDs.

Robert Santangelo also claims that the record companies, which have filed more than 18,000 piracy lawsuits in federal courts, "have engaged in a wide-ranging conspiracy to defraud the courts of the United States."

The papers allege that the companies, "ostensibly competitors in the recording industry, are a cartel acting collusively in violation of the antitrust laws and public policy" by bringing the piracy cases jointly and using the same agency "to make extortionate threats ... to force defendants to pay."

The Recording Industry Association of America, which has coordinated most of the lawsuits, issued a statement saying, "The record industry has suffered enormously due to piracy. That includes thousands of layoffs. We must protect our rights. Nothing in a filing full of recycled charges that have gone nowhere in the past changes that fact."

© 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

Purchase this AP story for reprint.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MUSIC_DOWNLOAD_SUIT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2007-01-31-00-46-59

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RIAA Accused Of Coaching 15-Year-Old Witness In File Sharing Suit

2006-01-23T22:12:35Z

RIAA Accused Of Coaching 15-Year-Old Witness In File Sharing Suit
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20051229/168259_F.shtml

Contributed by Mike on Thursday, December 29th, 2005 @ 04:09PM
from the bad-PR? dept.

Lawyer Ray Beckerman may have ditched Patricia Santangelo after promising to stick with her case against the RIAA all the way through, but he's still highlighting some interesting cases of people who are finally fighting back against the RIAA by exposing the exact problems with their lawsuits that many of us have been suggesting ever since the RIAA first started suing its customers. The first case has to do with an accused person protesting that the RIAA's practice of bundling a bunch of totally separate lawsuits together is inappropriate. He has some support in this. Nearly two years ago, a federal judge told the RIAA it needed to file each lawsuit separately -- something they still don't do. This same anonymous defendant is also poking holes in the rest of the lawsuit filing, saying that his ISP should not release the identification associated with his IP address, because the RIAA has not shown sufficient evidence and submitting evidence that the system used to find IP addresses of infringers by the company Media Sentry is unreliable. Courts in both Canada and the Netherlands have thrown out evidence from Media Sentry in the past, so there's at least a chance that this argument will hold.

The second lawsuit is even more interesting. It starts out like many of the recent lawsuits, a case where the person accused doesn't use a computer and knows nothing about file sharing. The defense began by highlighting how problematic this is -- pointing to numerous cases where the RIAA filed lawsuits against people who obviously did not do the file sharing, even while the RIAA insists that whoever's name is on the account is automatically responsible (something the law would appear to disagree with). However, here's where the case takes an interesting turn. The RIAA then received testimony from a 15-year-old employee of the defendants' home-based business, claiming that the defendant's wife did, in fact, listen to the downloaded music on their computer. After a number of others claimed that this was not the case, the 15-year-old asked to change her original deposition. The RIAA accused the defendants (now including the wife after amending the original case) of coercing the girl to change the story, but the defendants have spun that around to accuse the RIAA of influencing the girl's original deposition -- something the girl says is true. Apparently, the lawyers for the RIAA had contacted her, urging her to testify against the defendants, her employers. Combined with the fact that no other person who testified could recall the defendants ever using the computer to listen to music, it certainly seems to support the story that they did not do so. Also, not helping the RIAA's case was that, after being told that the defendants don't use a computer and don't use file sharing, they were told that it didn't matter: "someone is going to be responsible and someone is going to have to pay." None of this is all that surprising, but it's good to see people highlighting that these RIAA cases have a lot of legal problems, and seeing more and more people start to fight back against the lack of any real evidence by the RIAA. Still, it's a bit troubling to see the RIAA so unsure of their own legal standing against some of these defendants that they may have been reduced to coercing a 15-year-old girl to lie about her employer.

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Dont like our rules? TOUGH!

2006-01-03T00:26:10Z

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/01/01/coldplays_new_cd_has.html

"Coldplay's new CD comes with an insert that discloses all the rules enforced by the DRM they included on the disc. Of course, these rules are only visible after you've paid for the CD and brought it home, and as the disc's rules say, "Except for manufacturing problems, we do not accept product exchange, return or refund," so if you don't like the rules, that's tough. "

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Free malware with every Sony CD!

2005-12-30T18:35:16Z

http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/sony_mediamax.html

New Charges Against Sony's Use of Stealth Software

By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.Com

December 27, 2005

Just when you thought it might be safe to purchase a CD sold by Sony BMG, the electronics giant has come under fire for yet another case of secretly installing dangerous software on users' computers.

Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) have filed new charges against Sony for its "MediaMax" software. Like the infamous XCP "rootkit," MediaMax is designed to limit the number of copies a user can make of a CD.

The software, developed by digital rights management (DRM) vendor SunnComm, installs itself on a user's computer without permission, sends data back to SunnComm detailing the usage of the CD, and provides no method of uninstalling or removing the software without downloading special "uninstall" applications from Sony and SunnComm.

"We keep discovering additional methods Sony used to deceive Texas consumers who thought they were simply buying music," Abbott said in a press statement. "Thousands of Texans are now potential victims of this deceptive game SONY played with consumers for its own purposes."

The EFF suit states that installing the MediaMax software can "undermine significant security protections otherwise present on computers running Windows, which are designed to prevent [others] from gaining control of your computer."

EFF estimated that there may be as 20 million CD's with the MediaMax software on the shelves, and unlike the XCP rootkit, Sony has yet to issue a recall or exchange program for them. SunnComm posted a list of recent releases that contain the software.

J. Alex Halderman, a graduate student in computer science at Princeton University and co-author of the "Freedom to Tinker" technology blog, investigated the vulnerabilities created by MediaMax, and found that the uninstaller SunnComm offered to remove the software caused even more problems.

Halderman stated that the uninstaller employed the dangerous "ActiveX" control and could enable random Web sites the user visits to download and install code on the user's machine for any purpose the site owner desired.

"The evil site could use this ability to cause severe damage, such as…erasing your hard disk," he said.

Halderman called on Sony and SunnComm to issue an updated version of the uninstaller after detecting the vulnerability.

Halderman and SunnComm have crossed swords before. In 2003, the company threatened to sue Halderman for revealing that an earlier version of the MediaMax DRM software could be circumvented by holding down the "Shift" key on a computer keyboard when first installing the CD.

Halderman's partner, Prof. Ed Felten, believes that the MediaMax software "erodes security" of computers at a basic level. "If you decline the MediaMax license agreement, and the software secretly installs itself anyway, you will face risks that you didn't choose. You won't even know that you're at risk. All of this, simply because you tried to listen to a compact disc."

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jail time for lyrics sites

2005-12-10T00:20:39Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4508158.stm

Where's the HATE for the music industry?

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

we're losing this, guys

2005-06-10T16:00:34Z

http://ilx.p3r.net/thread.php?msgid=5295464

stop fucking buying!!

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

THIS WEEK'S EDITION OF ORGAN

2005-06-03T16:14:20Z

THIS WEEK'S EDITION OF ORGAN

An on-line version of ORGAN goes live every Thursday afternoon at http://www.organart.com as you all should know my now

ISSUE 121 of ORGAN features....

Album of the week
THE ADVERTS

Plus
COLDPLAY
HAMADRYAD
IN TORMENTATA QUIETE

Demo of the week
PISTOLS AT DAWN

Plus
CAUGHT YOU SMILING
FLIES ARE SPIES FROM HELL

Single of the week
T.RAUMSCHMIERE

Plus
MORNING RUNNER
DECORATION
SELF AGAINST CITY

YOUNG HEART ATTACK - LIVE - 93ft East, London

MURDER ONE are back....
BEEFEST is happening again
NO USE FOR A NAME UK tour and new mp3
NOSFERATU
THE ACUTE
BATTLE Of The BEANFIELD - 20 YEARS ON
RADICAL LOCAL NEWSLETTERS - how to start your own

SEAN O (London. UK) / Marcia X (Oakland, California)

http://www.organart.com - the online home of ORGAN magazine and ORG Records

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

Who gives a sh*t?

2005-05-26T12:04:50Z

Hi DESTROYERS!

We're Reactor. We're doing our own thing from our website. And everybody else's website. The music industry sucks dick and has already tried to steal our money. We've had enough.

Vote www.reactorsite.com

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Boycott Sony

2005-05-13T12:18:20Z

Original URL: http://www.jsonline.com/onwisconsin/music/feb05/305036.asp

Sony shuts down band Beatallica, Web site
Posted: Feb. 25, 2005

If you needed another reason to rail against the big bad record industry and how it stomps on the little guy, how about this: Local Metallica-Beatles parody act Beatallica was forced to shut down its Web site after receiving a cease-and-desist notice from Sony / ATV Music Publishing that alleged copyright infringement.

The band has received international notice for its clever sendups of both The Four Horsemen and The Fab Four, such as "I Want to Choke Your Band," and counts Metallica's own members among those who have expressed public support.

Beatallica had posted its songs online for free - until Sony opted to take legal action last week.

Fans of Beatallica quickly responded with an online petition asking that the cease-and-desist notice be lifted, arguing that, as a parody, the band is not violating copyright law.

As of Friday afternoon, more than 3,800 e-signatures in support of the band and its Web site had been received at www.petitiononline.com/p1gp0g/petition.html.

Beatallica comprises four veteran Milwaukee musicians and is up for a Wisconsin Area Music Industry Award this year in the specialty / nostalgia group category.

Neither Beatallica nor Sony / ATV returned calls seeking comment.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 5 replies

Supreme Court Will Consider Freedom of Information technology...

2005-02-22T17:49:57Z

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1804&u=/washpost/20050222/tc_washpost/a42401_2005feb21&printer=1

High-Tech Tension Over Illegal Uses

Tue Feb 22, 8:10 AM ET

By Jonathan Krim, Washington Post Staff Writer

In 2002, a young software programmer in Seattle named Bram Cohen solved a vexing Internet problem: how to get large computer files such as home movies or audio recordings of music concerts to travel rapidly across cyberspace.

Among the benefits of the invention, called BitTorrent, was that millions of users could quickly see lengthy amateur videos documenting the devastation of the December tsunami in the Indian Ocean, helping to spur an outpouring of charitable aid.

But BitTorrent also is wildly popular because the technology makes it easier to freely trade Hollywood movies and television shows, putting it in the cross hairs of the entertainment industry.

Increasingly, that same tension surrounds a dazzling new generation of high-tech products and services that help people copy, customize and increase the portability of digital works, sparking a sharp legal debate: How should courts view technologies that have beneficial uses but also are heavily used for illegal acts?

Next month, the U.S. Supreme Court (news - web sites) is scheduled to hear arguments on whether a file-sharing service named Grokster should be held liable for the millions of people around the world who use it to illegally trade music, movies and software.

The entertainment industry is asking the court to rule that even though Grokster itself does not engage in stealing files, the service is responsible because it is predominantly used for theft and has done nothing to try to stop that use.

The prospect that the court might adopt this legal reasoning is sending shudders through the technology and consumer electronics communities. Hundreds of existing products could be threatened, they say. And they fear that new products, and early funding, will die in the crib if the gear might be co-opted by people wishing to use it improperly.

"If it's so risky for me to try out new things or put new things on the market, you are really going to devastate people's willingness to innovate," said Elliott Frutkin, chief executive of Time Trax Technologies Corp., a Gaithersburg start-up.

His company's hardware and software turn individual songs or entire programs from XM and Sirius satellite radio broadcasts into digital files that can be stored on a computer, burned to a CD or transferred to portable players like Apple Computer Inc.'s iPod.

Frutkin said his product safely falls on the legitimate side of current law and regulations. But he also knows that many users of technology, especially those who are the quickest to latch onto new gadgets and services, may be willing to push legal boundaries.

"The first people who were playing with the technology TimeTrax is based on weren't people that I would have over for dinner with the family," said Frutkin, who does not condone stealing. "But that's the way things happen."

Major technology companies, including Microsoft Corp., Google Inc., Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) and America Online Inc., have urged the court to avoid basing its decision on how much a product is used for nefarious purposes. They argue that courts should look at whether Grokster actively encourages and helps users to steal, which would be punishable under existing copyright law.

Officials of the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America (news - web sites) say that approach would make it too easy for companies to avoid prosecution for acts they tacitly approve but never explicitly encourage.

The Grokster case, they insist, is not about scaring off new inventions. It focuses purely on file-sharing services -- including Kazaa and several others -- whose operations the entertainment companies claim are built to encourage, support and profit from piracy, even if the underlying technology has legal uses.

Firms that do not have illegal file-sharing as their primary business model have nothing to fear, said Fritz Attaway, chief policy counsel for the MPAA.

As an example, Attaway said the MPAA has not sued Cohen, the inventor of BitTorrent, instead targeting several operators of Web sites that serve as BitTorrent directories and openly list copyrighted movies.

Cohen said he developed the technology to allow devotees of bands that allow their concerts to be recorded to share copies with other fans. But he is well aware of the misuse by some BitTorrent index sites, whose operators have openly pitched their directories as resources for copyrighted movies.

"That's like putting a big 'shoot me' sign on your forehead," Cohen said of the sites.

Device makers have fended off the entertainment industry before. In a case that set the legal standards that will be reviewed in the Grokster case, the movie industry sued Sony Corp (NYSE:SNE - news) (news - web sites). over its Betamax recorders, arguing that copying television programs violated copyright laws.

In 1984, the Supreme Court ruled that making a copy to view at another time -- or "time-shifting" -- was an acceptable personal use. More broadly, it determined that device makers could not be held responsible for illegal acts of users as long as the product was "merely capable" of substantial uses that were legal.

The decision did not stop the entertainment industry from targeting, sometimes successfully, other products, including digital audio tapes, an early MP3 player and ReplayTV (news - web sites), a digital television recorder that also allowed users to skip commercials and send program copies to a handful of others.

In ReplayTV's case, the company was forced to shut down rather than fight industry lawsuits, said Andrew Wolfe, who was the company's chief technology officer. He said that once the litigation started, the company could not raise additional money from venture capitalists or other investors.

"What would have happened if you applied these same standards [sought by the entertainment industry] when people were shown the first Xerox machine?" Wolfe asked.

The ReplayTV brand was later purchased by another company.

One problem, many technologists said, is that it is hard to know what the entertainment industry deems to be acceptable use.

The recording industry, for example, has never explicitly said whether burning songs to CDs is acceptable use, said Steven M. Marks, general counsel of the RIAA (news - web sites). But burning a CD and distributing it to others is "clearly illegal," he said.

There is also a difference of opinion about what someone can record with a VCR. According to the MPAA's Attaway, the Betamax case gave consumers the right to record over-the-air television transmissions, but not programs via cable or satellite TV.

Such distinctions could pose problems for the burgeoning business of digital television recorders, said Gary Shapiro, head of the Consumer Electronics Association, the lobbying arm of roughly 2,000 device makers.

"The content people will tell you that everything that is not authorized . . . is infringing," he said. "This is the corporate equivalent of living under a tyrannical dictator. You are not breaking the law, but you want to keep your head down and not be noticed because the dictator randomly kills."

In one ongoing dispute, the movie industry is challenging Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) approval of a new feature from digital-recorder maker TiVo (news - web sites) Inc. that allows its users to make copies of digitally enhanced television programs and transfer them to a limited number of other locations.

Attaway argues that product and service providers who base their businesses around piracy should not be able to hide behind the mantle of innovation.

"Why should device manufacturers be exempt from all possibility of litigation?" he asked.

Another source of tension will probably be copying of digital radio programs and other broadcast "streams" designed to be listened to but not downloaded.

Marks of the RIAA said his organization has told the FCC (news - web sites) that users should be allowed to record only an entire program or stream, not cherry-pick individual songs to build their own music libraries.

TimeTrax allows recording of individual elements of a program, Frutkin said, but to demonstrate the company's anti-piracy commitment, it electronically stamps any recorded element so that if it showed up on a file-sharing network it would be easy to trace.

Other small companies are working to steer clear of any potential confrontation with the entertainment industry.

A California company called Grouper Networks Inc. makes file-sharing software for the private use of family members or other small groups, mostly aimed at those wanting to share photos. The software prevents the copying of music files and imposes restrictions on the size of any group wishing to share photos.

"We know what people want to do" with the software, said founder Josh Felser, "but we are not going to get embroiled in the controversy surrounding file-sharing."

Some who are concerned about the Grokster case say no matter what the Supreme Court does, the movie studios and recording labels are ultimately fighting a losing battle by trying to bottle up new technologies.

"We are moving into a world where access to information is more democratized," said Brad Burnham, a New York venture capitalist who works with early-stage media companies. "It's too easy to move it around. Value is going to shift from the creation of content to the organization and customization of that content."

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

End of an era :-(

2004-12-04T17:17:09Z

http://slate.com/Default.aspx?id=2109615

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 3 replies

information sharing to become illegal

2004-10-15T02:27:20Z

http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/09/28/HNusfiletrading_1.html

How long before all information and data becomes considered copyrighted material?

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

going to the Supreme Court

2004-10-11T00:48:35Z

Keep your eyes on this one folks... it's going to have huge consequences on people's rights and abilities to communicate with others.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1944&u=/variety/20041010/va_ne_al/hollywood_takes_p2p_battle_to_high_court&printer=1

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

I'm wavering

2004-09-13T22:31:21Z

Having read about the demise of the distributers of some of my favourite bands (not to mention the artist selling his house) I've wavering in my commitment to destroying the industry.

http://www.durtro.com/newsf.html

I'm gonna start buying a few more of their CDs.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

Apathetic

2004-08-31T18:40:58Z

Not enough destroying going on around here.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 3 replies

Don't like this at all ...

2004-07-29T23:52:44Z

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1265840,00.html

Clearly we aren't destroying enough ...

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

goodbye webjay

2004-07-25T14:22:49Z

Good blog posting from TeleDyn. Any thoughts?

http://www.teledyn.com/mt/archives/002070.html

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

what's a fair price to pay?

2004-06-29T03:25:32Z

with the recent flap about the RIAA wanting to raise iTunes prices, things have been put into (at least one) perspective. still, I wonder what people think is a fair price to pay for music.

I'm not a big fan of paying a huge fee to the label and the distributor, when the artists and even the stores should be making more of the money.

if it hasn't been posted here, Russia's bootleg sharing service www.allofmp3.com has the kind of price I actually think is fair.

you pay for bandwidth, pretty close to nothing, but still not quite nothing... what I don't like about iTunes is that you pay for 128bit songs, which sound like crap to me. I'm only going to pay full(ish) price for songs if I get high quality.

so with allofmp3, if you want CD-quality, you pay more. good deal. of course, it's totally going around copyright, so it's illegal, but the RIAA hasn't shut them down yet...

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 7 replies

dammit

2004-06-27T19:46:23Z

I woke up this morning and the 'music industry' was not yet destroyed. Someone get on that!

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

482 new ones

2004-06-22T21:17:20Z

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/webguide/music/2004-06-22-riaa-suits-mount_x.htm

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

493 new victims

2004-05-25T02:05:25Z

The terrorism continues...

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2004052412440002586809&dt=20040524124400&w=RTR&coview=

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 3 replies

FYVM - Eric IDle the 6th nicest....

2004-05-24T22:34:10Z

Not Safe for Work

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

@WAREZ

2004-05-10T14:47:14Z

The "government" is now tracking down owners of WAREZ servers and shutting them down. I'm not sure if they get arrested too, but i did notice that i could'nt find a lot of my fav warez sites anymore.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

Control

2004-04-23T02:27:58Z

I just read on google news that the Justice Department is really cracking down on some web sites that are responible for distributing so-called "pirated" material.

When it comes down to it, this is information we're talking about, people, a bunch of ones and zeros. If you snap a picture of something, are you pirating it?

It doesn't matter if it's John Ashcroft or Janet Reno - it's scary how much power these people have.

Those who control the flow of information control the world.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

Damn!!!

2004-04-22T15:56:19Z

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/low/entertainment/3615725.stm

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

Got Pirate?

2004-03-07T10:48:46Z

This would be so cool to have:
http://www.temporaryservices.org/audio_relay_index.html

Audio Relay - Designed and built by Brennan McGaffey
The Audio Relay is an autonomous radio station plus a music and sound archive. It travels from city to city gathering and presenting the work of musicians, sound artists, documentarians, and people whose work can be listened to. The Audio Relay houses a 4 watt FM transmitter, a folding antenna, a 30 watt amplifier, two speakers, two drawers that hold up to 200 cds and cdrs, a cd player, two solar panels on a detachable cover, one chair and has storage space for posters and other informative material.

The Audio Relay is compact and easy to move around. Its dimensions are 22 1/2 in. x 22 1/2 in. x 9 in. The Audio Relay can be set up anywhere. The solar panels provide some of the power. The Audio Relay can run off any international AC power source or, for remote locations, a 12volt car battery. The battery can be re-charged by the solar panels or by plugging the unit in to a wall outlet.

The Audio Relay can play music for an intimate audience as well as broadcast material in a radius of up to a mile away.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

RIAA gets sued

2004-03-07T10:41:01Z

It's about time...
http://www.globetechnology.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040218.gtriaa0218/BNPrint/Technology/?mainhub=GT

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Pirate?!

2004-02-16T05:18:24Z

I, like millions of others, share the occasional file. There is one thing I AM NOT. A Pirate.
The media, in its on-going effort to label everything has dubbed those who share files Pirates. Let's be clear on something. If I remember my history correctly, pirates could be described as many things, but a tendancy towards sharing was not one of them.

Let the English language have it's word back. Because if the title sticks, I want a change to burn Sony to its waterline and sell its executives into slavery if I have to live with it.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 32 replies

DefJam cheats

2004-02-02T18:58:21Z

<from http://xrrf.blogspot.com/ >
UNIVERSAL MUSIC GROUP ACCUSED OF DECEIT: Yeah, we know that record labels get called a lot, for a lot of things, but this time Def Jam is being sued in New York for fixing the album charts. According to her case, sales exexcutive Theressa Rossi was forced to front a promotion company, Giaco Entertainment, designed to inflate Def Jam's sale figures by perusading merchants to repeatedly scan cds barcodes in front of the Nielsen sale counter machines. Giaco offered bribes in the form of free CDs, it's alleged, and backed up the sweeteners with warnings of delayed shipments for shops which refused to play ball. The president of Giaco Entertainment, Joe Giaco has been named as defendant alongside Universal, Def Jam and Def Jam execs Kevin Liles and Mignon Espy.

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20040130-101524-4986r.htm

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

another round

2004-01-23T00:00:32Z

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20040121/D807BMD03.html

I wonder how many more grandparents and sixth graders are going to be harassed this time.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

Online music sales economics

2004-01-20T04:39:19Z

An article yesterday on the Washington Post website discusses the economics of the "legal" on-line music industry and some interesting aspects of this war-zone, including the following breakdown of revenue distribution...

"When iTunes sells a song for 99 cents, 70 cents is paid to the artist's record company. The artist typically gets 10 to 15 cents; the songwriter, about 8 cents."

I had previously read iTunes only makes $.01 per song (Apple makes their money selling pods).

Good article - see http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27954-2004Jan18.html

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 3 replies

A 16-penny nail in the coffin of the music cartel !

2004-01-18T11:14:10Z

Hey ya'll, I have been blown away by Weed (http://www.weedshare.com/index.html). They actually have a business model that makes sense and some technology to back it up. It's way too soon to tell if it will be successful, but between that, CDBaby (http://www.cdbaby.com/home), TAXI (http://www.taxi.com/), and satellite radio (www.xmradio.com, www.sirius.com), the music cartel is surely sh*t-scared!

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 8 replies

albini essay

2004-01-04T10:01:40Z

A classic essay by Steve Albini

"The Problem with Music"

http://www.negativland.com/albini.html

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

a musician speaks out

2004-01-02T12:17:35Z

hey,
i play drums. people say I am good, but what do they know?
cd's cost almost nothing to produce and yet we pay nearly 20 bucks to purchase them?
where does all the money go?
it would be GREAT if the answer to that was THE BAND.
Unfortunately, it's the record company.
the band gets screwed. the record company is rolling in it.

I'm not trying to downplay the fact that r. co.s get a band's music out there and make it widely available and are generally responsible for us being able to enjoy as much music as we do. All I am saying is, wouldn't it be nice if somehow we could reform the business to the point where a band makes a decent dollar (nothing ridiculous like an athlete's wages), the availablity of music is still upheld, and there are no giant corporate strongholds on something that is in fact ART?
what do you think?

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 5 replies

What a crappy present.

2003-12-20T00:27:01Z

http://www.whatacrappypresent.com/

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Fight back

2003-12-08T23:20:37Z

http://www.nj.com/news/ledger/jersey/index.ssf?/base/news-5/107077895367240.xml

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

harassing old retired people

2003-12-04T02:19:50Z

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=562&u=/ap/20031203/ap_on_hi_te/downloading_music_1&printer=1

Does anyone have any updates on those who refused to pay the extortion money?

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

Go-Kart's RIAA Letter

2003-11-11T15:48:33Z

http://www.gokartrecords.com/freedownload/riaa.php

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 2 replies

"RIAA Enemy #1: Wal-Mart, Not Kazaa"

2003-11-11T02:14:15Z

Interesting view from a venture capitalist:

"How Wal-Mart has done more than the Internet to change the structure of the music industry"

http://www.pacificavc.com/blog/2003/10/02.html

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

is downloading = stealining???

2003-11-05T17:05:52Z

I keep see people use terms such as "stealing", "pirating" etc. to describe sharing through copying music and other files over the internet.
Does anyone know of a person who, say during the 70's and 80's (been too young for 60's..), did not share through copying music using tapes??
The industry people were crying foul then and nowadays, some argue that I could not possibly have 4 milion + potential friends... BUllshit!!! Each of us have 6-7 billion + potential friends, and if one happened to be happily sharing the file I need, that's another plus for the human spirit.
The industry people say these files should be treated like any "hard" item.. Sure, when I sell an old book, or indeed an old car, do I need to pay anyone royalties?? Indeed, if I swap such items, no one can say this is anything like stealing.
Then what about the poor artists? YES!! What about these guyss, why can not they get a bigger share of sales, merchendise, etc.. Indeed, why, instead of trying to criminalise people, the industry looked for innovative ways of rewarding, sers as well as artists..?
I share files, I do it, I like it, I think this is the way forward and am proud of it. If anyone wants to sue me, I am happy to try and defend my (and others) freedoms.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

ALERT: RIAA/MPAA fucking your rights AGAIN

2003-10-29T21:20:25Z

Date: Friday, October 24, 2003 11:55 PM -0400
From: Seth Johnson <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org>
Subject: URGENT ALERT: Stop the "Broadcast Flag" at the FCC

. . . Action Alert:
--------------------------------------

Please send a comment to the FCC AGAIN, opposing the "Broadcast Flag"
Proposal

Tell the FCC to Serve the Public, Not Hollywood!

Okay, you folks understand this issue -- it's very important to send word to
the FCC in the next few days, that you OPPOSE the Notice of Proposed
Rulemaking #02-230. This rule would make it illegal for ordinary citizens
to own fully functional digital television devices. We've made it easy;
just follow the links below.

1) Please send in your comments to the FCC using the form provided below.
Tell them that the movie industry should not have a special privilege to own
fully-functional digital television devices. Read the alert below for
details.

2) Please forward this alert to any other interested parties that you know
of, who would understand and see the importance of this issue.

3) Volunteer to help us with this and other alerts related to your rights to
flexible information technology in the future. Two roles you can take up
are to become a Press Outreach Campaigner or a Commentator. Simply reply to
this email to show your interest.

. . . Action Alert:
--------------------------------------

Tell the FCC to Serve the Public, Not Hollywood!

Send Public Comments to the FCC AGAIN to Stop the "Broadcast Flag"

Please follow these links to let the FCC know that the public's rights are
at stake:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/fcc.flag/

What's Going On:

The FCC is expected to decide this week that digital televisions will be
required to work only according to the rules set by Hollywood, through the
use of a "broadcast flag" assigned to digital TV broadcasts.

As a result of the deliberations of a group called the Broadcast Protection
Discussion Group, which has assiduously discounted the public's rights to
use flexible information technology, Hollywood and leading technology
players have devised a plan that would only allow "professionals" to have
fully-functional devices for processing digital broadcast materials.

Almost a year ago, you responded to our call to tell the FCC that they are
to serve the public, not Hollywood. You delivered more than 4000 comments
to the the FCC's public comments system in the space of the last week of
their public comments period for the broadcast flag proposal. As a result
of this, Congress took notice and called a hearing to question the FCC on
the issue. When they asked the FCC's representative whether he believed
they could make this copyright-related policy decision without stepping
beyond their bounds and into Congress's jurisdiction, they answered in one
word: "Yes."

Now, their period of considering the proposal is drawing to an end, and they
are expected to decide to mandate the broadcast flag in a matter of days, by
the end of this month. It's time to demonstrate AGAIN that the public's
interests take priority over the wishes of the MPAA.

The idea of the broadcast flag is to implement universal content control and
abolish the right of free citizens to own effective tools for employing
digital content in useful ways. Hollywood and content producers must not be
allowed to determine the rights of the public to use flexible information
technology. The broadcast flag is theft.

In the ongoing fight with old world content industries, the most essential
rights and interests in a free society are those of the public. Free
citizens are not mere consumers; they are not a separate group from
so-called "professionals." The stakeholders in a truly just information
policy in a free society are the public, not those who would reserve special
rights to control public uses of information technology.

Please let the FCC know that the public's rights are at stake:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/action/fcc.flag/.

Here is a page pulling together and summarizing the comments submitted after
the last comments campaign:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/bfpc/

Here is our Reply Comment:
http://www.nyfairuse.org/bfpc/extdoc/NPRM%2002-231%20Reply%20Comments.pdf

----

The following link is the FCC's "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" for the
broadcast flag.

http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-02-231A1.pdf

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

Halloween Rave

2003-10-07T20:24:47Z

Who here is organizing a halloween rave : http://newjersey.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=8377&group=webcast

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

State of the nation

2003-09-30T15:34:50Z

I wrote this whole long article here and tribe.net site just lost it. I'll try to summarize....

-What is wrong
Normal cd prices at 800% markup. The recording industry told us they would lower the prices to tape prices to stimilate cd player sales in the 80's. Price for production of cd has gone down dramatically while consumer costs have not.

Lack of talent. It's not that the talent is not their, the scouts find them but are not always promoted by the recored execs. Have to meet those bottom lines of safe bets that are known sellers. How many Korns do we really need in the world?

Ticketmaster. Coming soon to a concert near you, actioned best seats. When will the 14 year old kid who has saved all their money see their idols up close? Now it will be the rich, the famous, and the corporate ticket holders. Just look at any Laker game.

Bad Media. We have the technology, give us better media so I don't have to deal with skipping cd's!

-Corporate Radio
Infinity....you're killing us. Give music some color and let the dj's be dj's for once. Step away from the programming! Really. Every American city now not only looks the same, but sounds the same.

How they can fix....
-Lower cd's costs to $8 a disk. They would have more people buy, less people download. Just think of how much the sales would jump. Now they would just have to give us talent.
-Ticketmaster. Stop over charging for venues. You have layed off people, replaced them with cheaper technology and you're charging higher processing fees? Now that's just greedy! The auctioning of tickets....a bad idea for consumers. Funny, scaplers were the enemy because of why Mr. Ticketmaster?

What to do? Boycott. Do not give them another dime until they fix thier issues. I know it's hard but you have to do what you must do. You also need to educate the public, meaning...tell friends, families, whoever your views and hope the will follow. There is strength in numbers and we must unite to take down the giants.

If you are reading this and are a record exec, feel free to contact me and I'm sure I can help find a resolution to all of our problems.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 3 replies

sharing through jukeboxes

2003-09-27T05:46:40Z

Interesting comment by Phil Greenspun.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Independents?

2003-09-20T03:12:03Z

Where do we stand on small, independent labels? Good or Bad?

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 1 reply

Verizon challenges music industry

2003-09-16T23:30:15Z

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,97438,00.html

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies

Civil terrorism

2003-09-10T20:45:14Z

What they're doing amounts to civil terrorism. I previously didn't have any sympathy for those who try to deliberately harm the industry, but this recent action by them has completely changed my mind on this. They're terrorising innocent victims, and like all terrorists they need to be destroyed using the same tools they terrorise others with. We will not be intimidated. We not will stand by and let innocents be intimidated by this organized crime group. DEATH to the music industry.

posted in DESTROY the music industry - 0 replies