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Musicians Demand the Internet Stay Neutral

Posted by kdawson on Thu Mar 29, 2007 08:47 AM
from the bits-is-bits-man dept.
Media Music
eldavojohn writes "124 bands — including R.E.M., Sarah McLachlan, and Pearl Jam — and 24 music labels are sending a clear message to keep Net traffic neutral. The Rock the Net campaign wants all traffic to be equal instead of allowing providers to charge a fee for certain pages to load faster than others. These musicians are the latest to join the Save the Internet campaign, which has the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet in its camp. Rep. Edward Markey, D-Mass., spoke at the campaign's kickoff. I think it's obvious that musicians (especially independents and small labels) will find themselves with the short end of the stick if they are asked to pay a fee to have their music streamed as fast as larger bands or even corporations."
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[+] Your Rights Online: RIAA Forces YouTube to Remove Free Guitar Lessons 341 comments
Bushido Hacks write "Is it so wrong to learn how to play the guitar? According to NPR, a record company ordered YouTube to remove videos of a man who offered to show people how to play the guitar for free. One of the songs that he taught was copyrighted, and as a result over 100 of his videos were removed from the internet. 'Since he put his Web site up last year, he has developed a long waiting list for the lessons he teaches in person. And both he and Taub say that's still the best way to learn. If someone tells Sandercoe to take down his song lessons, he says he will. But his most valuable videos are the ones that teach guitar basics -- things like strumming, scales and finger-picking. And even in the digital age, no one holds a copyright on those things.' How could this constitute as infringement if most musicians usually experiment to find something that sounds familiar?"
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  • Well, if REM (Score:5, Funny)

    by moseman (190361) on Thursday March 29 2007, @08:51AM (#18527549)
    Well, if REM says so, then it must be a good thing. That really helped me solidify my stance.
    • Considering that R.E.M. essentially is a corporation, I think it's funny that here they are being portrayed as fighters for the independent musician against the corporate machine.
      • That is just slick marketing, like when Marilyn Manson's lyrics decry capitalism. It helps get a bigger share of the disaffected youth dollar.

          • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

            by k_187 (61692)
            Just off the top of my head, from 'The Beautiful People': Capitalism has made it this way, Old-fashioned fascism will take it away It presumably taking about the eponymous beautiful people and society's desire to be like them.

      • Re:Well, if REM (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zontar_Thing_From_Ve (949321) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:11AM (#18527799)
        Considering that R.E.M. essentially is a corporation, I think it's funny that here they are being portrayed as fighters for the independent musician against the corporate machine.

        You obviously don't know their history or it would make perfect sense to you. R.E.M. got their start on I.R.S. Records, which was an independent label. It was a large and successful independent label, but this was largely through good management that signed a lot of really good bands at the time. R.E.M. was the kind of band that the majors wouldn't have touched in their early days, but they toured and built up a following on the college circuit and eventually signed a major label contract and became big stars. However, without I.R.S. Records, probably nobody outside of Athens would have ever heard of them.

        • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

          by CRCulver (715279)
          The independence of IRS has been debunked by nearly every biography of R.E.M. written. IRS cultivated an independent image, but had partnerships with major distributors the whole time. Furthermore, R.E.M. came to fame through Rolling Stone, hardly a bastion of independent thought but rather a place that knew just the right "big new thing" to pitch.
        • However, without I.R.S. Records, probably nobody outside of Athens would have ever heard of them.

          So without the backing of a large and successful label, which was being distributed by major corporate distributors (which include a few of the "big four" in the RIAA) and that had a show on MTV, they'd still be known mostly in Athens?

      • Re:Well, if REM (Score:5, Insightful)

        by jocknerd (29758) on Thursday March 29 2007, @10:05AM (#18528503)
        Let me guess. You probably are one of those who thinks a band is cool until they start to sell. After that, you consider them sell-outs. Am I accurate on this?

        I remember the 80's radio scene. My local rock station was pretty much like this from 1981-85:

        Van Halen, AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard, Motley Crue, Pink Floyd, The Who, The Rolling Stones, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Aerosmith. There was no R.E.M. or U2 or INXS or Husker Du or The Cure any alternative band being played on mainstream radio.

        While you may consider these guys corporate now, they were not corporate bands in the early to mid 80's. 1987 seemed to be the breakout year for U2, R.E.M., The Cure, and INXS and alternative music in general to get actual air play. Then Nirvana came along in 1991 and alternative became mainstream.

    • Well, if REM says so, then it must be a good thing. That really helped me solidify my stance.

      I'm waiting until the Pet Shop Boys weigh in.

  • CNN.com... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by lilomar (1072448) <lilomar2525@gmail.com> on Thursday March 29 2007, @08:53AM (#18527583) Homepage
    I think one of the best things I noticed about this article is the news site it is taken from. Not Wired online, not the Register, not any of the usual, tech-oriented news sites. CNN is read by the technoelite and the public in general. The entire Net Neutrality issue needs to be in the public view-space.

    • Re:CNN.com... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Spudtrooper (1073512) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:06AM (#18527723)
      Agreed - the cable companies have been running anti-neutrality ads trying to convince the public that the average consumer will be the one footing the bill for net neutrality. It's good to see the pro-neutrality camp finally showing up to the public discourse in the mainstream (i.e., non-geek-oriented) media.

    • Absolutely. (Score:3, Interesting)

      by raehl (609729)
      And somebody needs to come up with a better name for it than Net Neutrality.

      Something like...

      'Uncrippled Internet'

      As in...

      'Don't support a crippled internet!'

      'Stop a crippled internet!'

      'Verizon wants to cripple your internet!'

  • The definite article (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rob T Firefly (844560) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:01AM (#18527671) Homepage Journal

    and the Pearl Jam
    I'm glad the Pearl Jam is in on this. I love the Pearl Jam, I listen to the Pearl Jam all the time on the CD and the MP3.

  • Because spam and viruses must be allowed... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Not more Net Neutrality crap. I have to love /.'s double-stance on this. First they decry ISPs for not disconnecting clients that have been botted - then they demand that laws get passed to prevent that.

    Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to implement QOS? Do I have to give up decent ping times on VOIP calls solely because the idiots next to me absolutely have to BitTorrent the latest episode of American Idol? Should someone sending spam be given equal priority to the 'net as someone trying to send emails to coll

    • Re:Because spam and viruses must be allowed... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Volante3192 (953645) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:22AM (#18527905)
      Apples and oranges. Botted systems represent a security risk to the ISP and to other customers and are not providing a commercial service. (Incidentally, it's also probably against their Terms of Serivce to run a botted system, but TOS is only pulled out when it benefits them...) Net neutrality is ISPs charging companies to use the faster lanes which ends up getting passed to the consumer and is nothing more than a money grab.

      Should someone sending spam be given equal priority to the 'net as someone trying to send emails to colleagues?

      Oddly, if you QOS port 25 the spam goes through just as fast as the legit email. Incidentally, this is an argument for quarantining systems, not net neutrality.

      Net Neutrality means throwing up our hands in the air and allowing the Internet to become a useless mess of spam and viruses since the power to handle them would be stripped from ISPs. It means giving up on streaming video and audio. It means giving up on VOIP. ...like ISPs do anything about spam and viruses now to begin with. They'd claim common carrier and do nothing like usual.

      Plus it's not giving up on video/audio and VOIP...it's giving up on third party streaming video and audio and VOIP. Why should Verizon allow Vonage's VOIP (yea, i know the patent issues, bear with me) to travel as fast as Verizon's VOIP solution? Without competition, Verizon has no reason to improve their service either.

      Net neutrality = competition allowed to exist = better for consumers.

        • Re:Because spam and viruses must be allowed... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by aaronl (43811) on Thursday March 29 2007, @10:56AM (#18529295) Homepage
          Because it is allowing companies to slow down service for those that don't pay. Under the current arrangement, everyone has equal access. With what the telcos and cable companies want to do, some company gets to pay them to be "high priority". This means that the higher-paying traffic bumps all the normal, non-paying, traffic, making everything else go slower.

          To do a real-world analogy, let's say that you have an eight lane highway. Normally, any car can use any of the four lanes in either direction. Now, we're going to do the telco money-grab on the road. I'll pay for "high priority" service on the highway. If I'm traveling down a lane, you, as a non-payer, must get out of my way, no matter what the traffic congestion looks like. This will result in me getting to my destination faster, and it taking longer for you to get to yours. In other words, I would be effectively paying to slow down everyone else while allowing me to go faster.

          I have a problem with this, since I pay for my Internet connection. I agreed that I wouldn't always get the full bandwidth I paid for, due to various circumstances beyond my ISP's control. I *did not* agree that the ISP could deliberately tamper with my traffic to make some things slow, and some things fast. I would imagine that my ISP did not agree to that with their upstream provider, and they with theirs. It is a radical change in the way the infrastructure works, and makes it a different beast.

          If a company wants to charge more for a connection that tends towards lower latency (a T-3 instead of a cable modem), that's fine. If someone wants to charge more for 10Mb of upstream bandwidth than for 5Mb, then that's also fine. It is *not* fine to say "we're making other companies' traffic get precedence over your traffic, unless you pay us more".
          • Also, I'm already paying for both up and down bandwidth. So I'm not exactly sure who they think they're fooling with all this "free rider" bullshit.
            If google sends me some packets i've requested, I'm pretty sure that access of Comcast's network is already covered by the Arm and Leg I fork over to Comcast every month for the down portion of my connection.
            And considering how much of the theoretical down bandwidth i have but dont use, its complete bullshit for them to even be contemplating double charging for
          • Please resubmit using an analogy based on a series of tubes.

    • Re:Because spam and viruses must be allowed... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by peragrin (659227) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:43AM (#18528205)
      net neutrality isn't about an ISP blocking a spam bot, it's about ISP double billing their customers, and then taxing certian traffic at higher rates.

      Google has to pay an ISP for service. now that ISP wants to not only charge google for data coming out of there services but also for giving that data premium bandwidth at the cost of something else.

      Net neutrality is to prevent the AOL'ing of the Internet. the ISP's want to nickel and dime you to death to increase their revenue. Just like how when AOL, Prodigy and compuserv first came online you couldn't send email between them, unless you were a premium suscriber if at all. Now ISP's want to do that to IM's emails, videos, file transfers. If you want music from itunes but your ISP only supports Zune-live then your screwed and have to pay more per megabyte for a slower transfer.

      That way only the rich companies could afford the bandwidth and premium charges to make them popular. Companies like Youtube wouldn't be able to even get started under such a situation.

    • The solution (Score:5, Insightful)

      by jonwil (467024) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:47AM (#18528269)
      Most of the people who want "net neutrality" probably don't want to ban QOS outright.

      This is what I think ISPs should be prohibited from doing:
      1.Discriminating or throttling or blocking based on source/destination addresses (and that includes forcing companies like google to pay more if they want full speed over the ISPs network)

      2.Applying any kind of throttling based on port number. QOS is fine (that is, giving VoIP packets priority over BitTorrent packets) but throttling is NOT. If a network link is 1.5MBps and no-one wants to send traffic other than BitTorrent traffic over that link, the BitTorrent traffic should be able to use the entire 1.5MBps link (obviously if someone starts sending VoIP packets, then the network link wont accept as many BitTorrent packets and the BitTorrent download will slow down). This would specifically prevent the (increasingly common) practice where ISPs give you 1.5MBps or whatever speed but no matter how perfect the network conditions, BitTorrent or Emule or whatever else is limited so it can never go over 128KBps or 256KBps or whatever. Write in an exemption for cases where there is a direct threat to the network or to another network (e.g. someone spewing out packets as part of a DDOS attack)

      These measures would still allow ISPs to completely block ports used by malware as well as measures like blocking port 25 to cut off spam zombies. And it would allow ISPs to apply QOS so that your VoIP packets have higher priority than the BitTorrent packets. But it would prevent ISPs from deciding that if you access CNN.com you can have the full 1.5MBps speed (assuming the rest of the network can handle that) but if you access YouTube.com or download something over BitTorrent, you cannot ever get more than 256KBps unless you pay extra for it (or google pays extra for it in the case of YouTube)

    • Re:Because spam and viruses must be allowed... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by phoenixwade (997892) on Thursday March 29 2007, @10:59AM (#18529341) Homepage

      Not more Net Neutrality crap. I have to love /.'s double-stance on this. First they decry ISPs for not disconnecting clients that have been botted - then they demand that laws get passed to prevent that.
      No, Net neutrality means equal access to all services. Shutting down BOTS means removing a service that affects equal access. the difference is Quarantining the bots, as opposed to choosing say CNN over FOXNEWS by providing more bandwidth to one over the other.

      Why shouldn't ISPs be allowed to implement QOS? Do I have to give up decent ping times on VOIP calls solely because the idiots next to me absolutely have to BitTorrent the latest episode of American Idol? Should someone sending spam be given equal priority to the 'net as someone trying to send emails to colleagues?
      Because you are misrepresenting the issue. Represent the issues AS IT IS, steering of a consumer to one or more services in favor of other services. Quality of service isn't the issue. Net neutrality is tuning down bit torrents so long as you tune down ALL bit torrents equally. It's eliminating VoIP entirely if you eliminate it at all. It's applying the ISPs rules of QoS equally for all users and for all services. It's not favoring one provider over another, and allowing the consumer to choose what provider of what service they want, rather than the ISP.

      Net Neutrality means throwing up our hands in the air and allowing the Internet to become a useless mess of spam and viruses since the power to handle them would be stripped from ISPs. It means giving up on streaming video and audio. It means giving up on VOIP.
      Where did that load of crap come from? Where is the data to support this? Even if you were right (and you very much are not) it's not like the CONNECTION provider is doing all that much to stop either of these. the SERVICES provider is where the work is being done, at the Email server, for example.

      I don't think it's worth it. Why the hell shouldn't I be allowed to pay more to get a better connection?
      You are misrepresenting again.... Anti-net neutrality (Your support of the Crappynet) doesn't allow you to pay more to get a better CONNECTION, it forces you to pay more to choose to use services that compete with the services that have not struck a deal with the ISP that YOU are paying.

      You can choose to pay more for a faster connection right now. In our area, you can still buy dialup, multiple flavors of dsl, cable, t-1's, t-3's, fibre, WiFi.... and other choices that I have forgotten about. Each come with different prices and speeds. More remote situations are limited in connectivity choices, certainly. But in all cases, the contract between me and the provider involves connection speeds. I don't have to, and do not WANT to, have to pay more to use iTunes or BMG music, because it's not on the favored list.

  • Why the big fuss? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by dkf (304284) <donal.k.fellows@manchester.ac.uk> on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:16AM (#18527837) Homepage
    OK, there's a good argument that everyone's email or web traffic ought to be the same, but for some applications you really do want the net itself to not be totally neutral. For example telesurgery, where a surgeon conducts operations remotely through the use of a robot, and where you really don't want packets getting delayed and are willing to pay for the elevated service. Do we really want such applications blocked (or made unreasonably hazardous) just because of poorly written regulations that are attempting to prevent possible future abuse? Would it not be better to break up the big telco monopolies instead and so allow competition to work in customers' favour?

    • Re:Why the big fuss? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by R2.0 (532027) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:36AM (#18528105)
      The problem with that reasoning is that EVERYONE thinks their application is critical. And the arbiters of who gets the priority access are not neutral - they want to give it to whoever pays the most. So...

      Situation #1: providers oversell "priority access", leaving the "critical" applications fighting it out for bandwidth just like they do now (and the "non-critical" apps wishing they had their 56k back)

      Situation #2: Providers ration "priority access", which keeps speeds high for "critical" applications but drives up the price of that access via the laws of supply and demand. Providers realize that therey have no incentive to use those higher profit margins to invest in better infrastructure, as the poorer the infrastructure, the more they can charge for "priority access". (Think Enron pulling plants offline to make electricity rates spike and California brownouts)

      Situation #3: Government, quasi-gov't (ICAAN), or NGO control of access. Does ANYONE think this is a good idea?

      Here's another thought - maybe telesurgery isn't that good an idea.

  • Cat and Mice (Score:3, Funny)

    by boyfaceddog (788041) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:17AM (#18527857) Journal
    And in other news, Mice demand Cats stop chasing them.

    Yawn.

    • Re:Well then it's settled (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 29 2007, @08:56AM (#18527619)
      Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.

      -Mohandas Gandhi

    • Re:Well then it's settled (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mwvdlee (775178) on Thursday March 29 2007, @08:57AM (#18527629) Homepage
      Probably not, but they might think other people believe their opinions matter and thus gather more support from the population. At the very least it will help bring the matter to a broader public so people actually know there's something to form an opinion on.
      Remember; just because you're not stupid, doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by wasted (94866)

        ...Remember; just because you're not stupid, doesn't mean the rest of the world isn't.

        You should make that your sig. Or put it on CafePress as a bumper sticker.

    • Re:Well then it's settled (Score:5, Insightful)

      by essence (812715) on Thursday March 29 2007, @08:59AM (#18527657) Homepage Journal

      I'm all for net neutrality, but did they really believe that their opinions matter?

      Of course their opinions matter. They are well known people with large followings, they can help get the message out there. What matters more is that more and more people speak up.

        • So what are you saying, that people should speak up about stuff they know nothing about???

          I'm not saying anybody should do anything. People often like to hear what their favourite artist has to say about things. Also, how do you know that they know nothing about the subject?

    • Re:Well then it's settled (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Don_dumb (927108) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:02AM (#18527683)

      I'm all for net neutrality, but did they really believe that their opinions matter?
      What, more than your opinion matters?
    • I'm afraid there's millions of brainless prats who hang on every word of these vapid, blithering corporate constructs. The prats then vote vapid, brainless political constructs into office, and we get government with the math, science and logic skills of a dead vole.

      But I'm not cynical.
      • I'm afraid there's millions of brainless prats who hang on every word of these vapid, blithering corporate constructs. The prats then vote vapid, brainless political constructs into office, and we get government with the math, science and logic skills of a dead vole.


        Please don't insult dead voles, at least they know how to decompose gracefully
    • They do matter because people will follow them. If there is money raising to be done (and there always is) there are few better ways to do it than get a celebrity on board, look at Parkinsons or spinal injuries or ball cancer.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by LWATCDR (28044)
      The bands are acting as the mouthpiece for the RIAA/Music companies.
      The RIAA counts... which is really way too bad.
      Good grief the RIAA is for Net neutrality... I feel like I need to take a long shower and scrub really hard now..

      BTW the record companies want to sell you music with DRM and music videos with DRM. They don't want to pay Verizon and or AT&T the extra fees they want to charge the content providers for using their tubes.
      It is all about the money.

    • Re:Well then it's settled (Score:4, Funny)

      by sootman (158191) on Thursday March 29 2007, @09:38AM (#18528143) Journal
      Dude, shut up, we need them! Musicians have already ended voter apathy, [wikipedia.org] and I seem to remember a very successful "rock (or rockers) against drugs" campaign, and now they're turning their attention to our cause. Sweet! We're bound to win!
    • That's because bands make more money touring than they do from CD sales. They get the bulk of the concert ticket sale price, but just a small fraction of the CD price. So, if you really want to support a band, boycott the MAFIAA by not buying CDs, and go to a concert instead.

    • In general, I think if you want to be an artist, then you want to have as many people as possible to have access to your material, and if can also make a buck, it's an extra.


      I have an idea: Why don't you go ahead and do that with your art and stop trying to tell everyone else what to do with theirs. Lead us by example.

      • I don't think R.E.M. would need to work part time to support themselves. The OP was talking of bands that could afford to ditch their labels and the RIAA. Every time R.E.M release a single or album (and they've released a few so far) they make more money than most people will in their entire lifetimes; I think they can afford to stop earning and still live comfortably.
        • That's one opinion, but you don't have a way of knowing exactly what these bands are doing with their money either. Who says R.E.M. isn't spending a good bit of money on other charitable causes and interests? Maybe they are, and maybe they're not. But it's certainly possible.

          Quite a few bands were hugely successful for years, only to become completely irrelevant if they stopped putting out material and decided to live off their past success. Maybe R.E.M. and others like them feel that they need to keep

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by spyrochaete (707033)
      I don't know about the others, but 10 years ago Pearl Jam boycotted TicketMaster on the grounds that their service fees were exorbitant. I've never been a huge fan of their music but I support that band 100% for their support of their fans.

      You bring up a great point though. If your favourite band works for the RIAA then you are not their top priority, money is.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Imagix (695350)
      > Nobody "owns" the Internet. If some ISPs or backbone companies decide to limit bandwidth to certain sites, then they will simply lose business to the service providers who don't limit bandwidth.

      And then you have the people that only have a "choice" of 1, maybe 2 ISPs. If that one ISP, or both ISPs do the throttling, then the user doesn't have the ability to change service providers. That theory might work if one realistically had a choice of a multitude of service providers. It doesn't work in a mon

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by drinkypoo (153816)

      You know there was a time that Rock partly meant protest, something your parents didn't like

      No, that's what it meant to you. What it meant to record labels was MONEY. If it didn't look like it would make money, they wouldn't put it out there.

      The only musical movement I can think of that died before it was commercialized was hardcore punk. It was a creation of youth and came from a point of ignorance which frankly was one of its strengths - punk didn't involve acceptance of what people told you that you co

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