According To The RIAA, We Are All Criminals

Guess what, Chris… SONY is advertising a special audio set called AUDIO UNITED here in Mexico through TV and magazines. The campaign started less than a week ago. The set is a combo made up of a receiver and a CD/mp3 integrated player.. It also has two (2) small portable mp3 players so “you listen to your favorite music on your “Explode” car stereo or wherever you feel like having fun”. The receiver has a special socket to plug in your portable player so you can “rip your music easily”. I’ve been trying to catch the advertisement on TV to no avail, but you can find it printed in the magazine “QUO”, October issue, page 22, in Spanish. Sorry about that. After reading your interesting posting I can only think that SONY is luring us to buy this product so they can sue us afterwards, don’t you think so?

The music industry has been ripping us off for 30 years. They used to release music as singles. Then, hit singles were combined into albums.

So, if you bought a Beatles album, every track on the record was gold.

Then, the singles were phased out in favor of albums. Most albums had two or three gold tracks and the rest were substandard. You couldn’t buy the good tracks without buying the album. So, you had to spend $10, then $12, then finally $16 for two hit songs. The rest were junk. That’s why we started making mix tapes — we recorded the good tracks off all of our mostly lousy albums.

Now, with digital downloads, we don’t have to buy the entire album — unless the whole album is great (like Annie Lennox’s new album).

Chris Pirillo’s round table: RIAA…

According To The RIAA, We Are All Criminalsby Chris Pirillo on October 5, 2007 at 9:22 pm The lead attorney for Sony BMG announced publically that copying music you legally purchased for your own use is illegal. The round……

First Song is a name I stay away from since the webroot incident. Second I always thought the fair use part of the lic. meant just that not what they, the music company, think is fair.

Much to the dismay of many of my relatives and acquaintances, I’m a chronic whistler. (I whistle very well, but some people have no appreciation of the simpler arts.) Now, however, I shall have to whistle in private, after having scanned for eavesdropping devices, lest the RIAA Whistling Police charge me with performing copyrighted material without paying royalties.

Perhaps if I stick to Vivaldi, and am careful to avoid modern arrangements, I’ll be able to remain un-sued long enough to decide what to do next.

I was thinking about moving to Switzerland, but the glaciers are melting. Uruguay’s out; the Bushes and Sun Myung Moon will be there. Any suggestions?

I guess Sony has forgotten the Betamax. Maybe they should just sit down and shut up!

They can keep their music. I ain’t buying it. Don’t like most of that music anyway. I’ve got plenty to listen to, but I only buy if it is DRM free.

Some say that “DRM is theft”. Their point is that DRM has stolen your fair use rights. Write to your congressperson to complain, and vote with your pocketbook.

An idea:

Create a movement to have all (reasonable) computer users to create a P2P share on their hard drives and fill it with files named as song files but are actually anything else - images, text documents, whatever. Initially, there will be a number of subpoenas for people who wouldn’t have been called otherwise, but this will:

1. immediately dilute the pool of cases including the “legitimate” cases to the point that courts will look at RIAA’s procedures as ineffective and ambiguous.

2. with a 99% rate of frivolous, unsubstantiated cases, make it economically infeasible for the RIAA.

I bet some of the great P2P software authors could easily make a downloadable program to set up one’s computer with this plan. (They might even relish working on the project.)

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End of idea - (The following is just a rant and doesn’t contain anything useful.)
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I hope that helps. I’m so pissed at these soul-less attorneys that I just hope to help stonewall their immoral and underhanded way of trying to coerce money from fine upstanding people. Since the recording industry failed at claiming enough market share with new technology, they should try another approach again instead of trying to bleed their former customers for revenue they could have produced with the right business model. I think when CD recorders became affordable to the home user, they should have realized that they were no longer the only ones capable of producing their product and gotten ahead of the digital game at that point. It seems they’re poor at business and immoral in character. Gee, how many artists have we heard that from over the last 60 years?
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Copyright ©2007 - Mike Peterson

In todays digital world you do not own anything. Microsoft has made it clear you do not own their software you just pay for the right to use it under the terms and conditions of the EULA. Same with digital music, the RIAA and Sony seems to think you pay for the right to listen to the music under their terms and conditions.

What about GPL licensed music?

Suffice it to say that Sony’s view of the world is a tad skewed. Remember that Sony is the company who also thought that it was legal, and acceptable, to surreptitiously install rootkit software on *your* computer, which then, unknown to you, opened you up to a host of other rootkits against which you were then defenseless, because Sony opened your back door. And ultimately, that opinion will be tested, both in the courts of law, and the court of public opinion. For me, their opinion is irrelevant. As a result of their root kit debacle, and reinforced by this opinion, I continue to vote with my dollars. I refuse to buy anything of the Sony brand, no matter what the product, or anything associated with a Sony company. We each must decide what is appropriate action, and act accordingly. But the only thing that I personally can do to express my displeasure with their cluelessly twisted view is simply to never spend another dime on anything Sony, and hope they find a place in the corporate graveyard, right next to SCO.

I don’t believe they are doing this because they are “hurting financially.” Over this four year “project,” they have been losing money, it was stated in the Thomas trial. The only ones profiting are lawyers and their workers. I imagine the major record labels are selling less, because their stuff is crapola, people don’t have means to decide if they want tunes except P2P and occasional radio, costs too much to buy CD for a couple of decent toons, people are overexposed to what passes for “music” anyhow and less interested in it, and people’s expectations have permanently changed as a result of the digital and Internet “revolution”–for one people are less inclined to buy a “pig in a poke” just because it is by some “familiar name band.”

It is difficult or impossible to “truly” know why someone or some organization is doing something. But let me propose they are doing this because they are hurting mentally and hurting morally.

Mentally, they hire lawyers and direct them to drive forward ever faster while looking in the rear view mirror. True, “copyright infringement” is illegal, and factions try to equate this with “theft”–so they can “legally” try some of these shenanigans. On the other hand, what worked in 1910 will not work in the 21st century. Intellectual property producers need to look toward some other solution like demanding that people who want to share files can do so if they pay a central depository some reasonable fee like $5/month–this fee to go to the “content producers” not the majors and their business operation, based on observed frequencies of sharing or whatever. Yet everytime they are asked about the virtue of their program they state this must be done so people will respect the letter of the law. It has been said that insanity is repeatedly doing the same thing even when it fails every time, or something like that.

Morally, they are alienating and bullying all their customers, a thing unheard of in successful businesses, no? People who grok morality will go for cause and effect: karma. Angry people–and others not so angry but cognizant of the scene her–have many choices besides buying their CDs or downloads from the majors: P2P, Rapidshare type downloading, newsgroups, IM, copying from other’s collections, buying CDs on eBay then selling the doggone thing back! The most poignant and evidentiary thing I see *right here* is that Mr. Perillo has gone–in a very few years–from not allowing any mention of P2P’ing on his email letters [which just about convinced me to stop reading his stuff, but I soldiered on for his other benefits ] to occasionally mentioning some P2P software, to his present decision he will not purchase anything from the majors. So even Chris demands some control over the “intellectual property” allegedly represented by a CD/DVD/downloaded_file. Even though Chris is substantially business oriented rather than an extremist and free thinker (like Grannar Olice), he has come to the conclusion the RIAA program makes no sense, business or otherwise.

There will always be those who will continue purchases from the majors, for convenience, because they side with whatever currently is “legal” rather than moral, reasonable, or supportive of current and developing personal need and culture–or whatever. But the RIAA/MPAA has wreaked disaster upon the labels and artists it allegedly supports. I say don’t get angry, don’t get even, just see reality then get along your way! And watch the content providers change they way the do business. We will all benefit–and yes–profit!

What’s next? Is my grocery store going to tell me that the eggs I just bought can only be scrambled and not sunny-side up?

Instead of getting angry at Sony, why don’t you spend some time and effort gettting angry at all those people who regard pirating music and movies as “no big deal”
How many friends do you have that possess content that they did not buy and do not own? How much content do YOU posess that you did not buy?

Yes, let’s stop the insanity. Let’s hound those who pirate and share content illegally to the ends of the earth because they are screwing it up for those of us who buy and enjoy our tunes.

Just one more nail in Sony’s coffin as far as I’m concerned. With all the things they’ve pulled over the last couple of years, I doubt I’ll ever buy another product from them. I wouldn’t have ever thought I’d feel this strongly about not dealing with a company, but I won’t buy Sony products even if it means I have to settle for something not as good as an alternative. I’m even at the point that I check music and movies before I buy them. If they’re Sony, I move on.

And no, I don’t download a pirated version of that content, I just refuse to support a company that apparently thinks all their customers are thieves at heart, who should consider themselves lucky to have the privilege of handing their hard-earned money over to Sony.

I can see that the Windows Fanatics is being updated on the lockergnome web site, but my email newsletters for Windows Fanatics haven’t come in for quite some time. I still get other Lockergnome newsletters fine. I even tried resubscribing to no avail. I even have administrivia@lockergnome.com in my address book.

If this movement becomes legitimate then I think it is time we file a Class-action lawsuit against Apple, SanDisk, Rio, Creative and yes, SONY, for producing devices that enable us to break the law. If they didn’t produce these devices, we wouldn’t be criminals.

And if they can’t see how rediculous it is, let them waste their resources fighting the Class Action. It would be quite a large Class, if you ask me.

How about this for taking things to extremes:

‘Kwik-Fit accused of music copyright breaches

A JUDGE refused to throw out a claim against Kwik-Fit over allegations it is infringing musical copyright because employees tune into radios at work.

The Capital-based tyres and exhaust giant wanted the case brought against it dismissed in a procedural hearing at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.

But Lord Emslie yesterday ruled the action for £200,000 brought by the Performing Right Society (PRS) can go ahead.

It claimed Kwik-Fit fitters use personal radios at work and music, protected by copyright, could be heard by colleagues and customers.

The firm said it has a ten-year policy banning the use of radios.

But the PRS said a survey found music audible at Kwik-Fit on more than 250 occasions nationwide’.

American law is that you may make one backup copy. If Sony an others have a poblem with that,to bad!