Greene's Grammy Speech Debunked 408
jonerik writes: "Today's New York Times has this article which debunks at least part of NARAS president Michael Greene's much-publicized speech at last week's Grammy Awards ceremony in which Greene claimed that he had hired three students to download a whopping 6,000 songs "from easily accessible Web sites" over two days. Leaving aside for a moment Greene's bizarre admission on national TV that he'd hired three students (at least one of whom, Numair Faraz, is a minor) to break the law (the No Electronic Theft Act), Faraz has been interviewed by the Times, saying that they spent more like three days on the project and that the other two students (both unnamed, though both are apparently attending U.C.L.A.) barely used P2P file-sharing programs at all. Instead, they used AOL's popular Instant Messenger to receive song files from friends."
Wow... (Score:2, Insightful)
What do you expect (Score:4, Insightful)
Call the FBI. (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy to prove, he made an admission that was recorded and video taped.
Doesn't he want all music pirates convicted?
AIM isn't P2P? (Score:3, Insightful)
life and death issue?? (Score:5, Insightful)
This problem won't be solved in short order. It's going to require education, leadership from Washington and true diligence to help our fans - that would be you - to embrace this life and death issue and support our artistic community by only downloading your music from legal Web sites
How can anyone compare death to music piracy with a straight face? Needless to say I turned the channel and stopped watching the shortly there after. The little respect that I had for the Grammies was lost that night. I think it pissed me off more that no one booed him off stage.
FUD (Score:5, Insightful)
First off he said that downloading music is a bad thing. Then in the next breath he incuraged everyone to download music from RIAA approved web sites.
Second. Who uses the www to download music anyway? It's all FTP or the various P2P services. The only exceptions that I've seen is music that has already be approved for download. MP3.com is an example of that.
Third. My guess is that MP3.com would have 6000 MP3s avaliable. All you would need is wget and a small shell script to download all the songs automatically. Keep in mind that there is legally nothing wrong with downloading music from there.
I find it pretty sad that they had to go to all of the trouble of writing that speech just to try and sway the public away from downloading online audio. Was downloading the 6000 songs trying to prove a point? It just sounds to me like they were breaking their own laws. If it is okay for them to do it why can't I? The RIAA knows their current role is coming to an end and they fear this. The truth is, is that they will not become obsolete, their role will only change.
Odd connections in the mind (Score:3, Insightful)
Greene claims that P2P programs are bad, and that thievery is easy, backed up by the 6,000 songs they got. Then it comes out that they weren't really using P2P programs at all, but doing something covered (legally) by fair use.
Post 9/11, there was a need for more airline security and an outcry over the pisspoor airline security that was in place at the time...and then it comes out that the hijackers used boxcutters, which were legal to take onto airplanes at the time.
Re:life and death issue?? (Score:1, Insightful)
The same way you can compare copyright infringement to piracy. Piracy does cause death, but copyright infringement is not piracy.
Correllation != Causation (Score:1, Insightful)
Now: Napster's gone and music sales are down.
This does not mean that napster's demise was the cause of music sales being lower. There could be some other reason for the correllation. For example, music could have been better a couple of years ago. That would explain both music sales and napster usage. Or maybe interest in the music scene was just higher back then. Currerntly there are plenty of other programs that filled the void left by napster (e.g. gnutella) we don't see the amount of music sales as we had in napster's prime.
Is it any wonder? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now, here's a question I'd like to ask: If I have purchased all of Sarah McLachlan's albums (for examples sake) and if she were to release a "Best of" compilation, and I already own the CD's on which the songs that are part of that compiliation originally appeared, then go to USENET and download that "Best of" CD in mp3's, am I a thief? I've already paid for the rights to listen to the songs on the original albums. Hell, for all they know, I got the track list and created it myself based on burns from my original CD's.
The RIAA can go fuck itself, in my estimation, hopefully using a large, blunt instrument, such as a baseball bat or rubber pitchfork. I've never seen an industry try so hard to alienate it's customers.
Life and DEATH?!? (Score:4, Insightful)
Geez, can't the music folks go back to "raising awareness" about other life and death issues like HIV and Breast Cancer? Seriously, life and death? Has this guy been reading too much of The Onion [theonion.com]? A statement like this completely undermines all of the actual life and death situations in the world, ones which Greene mentioned at the beginning of his speech.
The only thing seriously in jeopardy is Mr. Greene's ability to continue payments on his Porsche as he watches his 1950's-era business model crumble under the weight of 80's-era technology that's finally come of age.
How much does this article really matter? (Score:2, Insightful)
Do you really think anyone's going to notice an article refuting those claims, even if it is on the NY Times site, refuting his claims?
These people (The RIAA types) aren't after verifiable truths and hard facts. They're after media-friendly catchphrases and meaningless FUD they can sow to get their way.
Anything said in this article is going to be about as meaningful and have as much impact as those tiny size 8 retractions printed on the inside back of a tabloid after they've splashed the latest unsubstantiated rumour over the front cover in size 40 bold print.
Re:6000 songs? (Score:3, Insightful)
FYI, using the OSCAR version of AIM (not TOC, which doesn't support file transfer), you can select entire directories to send to someone. Say you have all your MP3s on a Windows machine at c:\music. If you type in c:\music\ into the AIM file transfer window, it will send c:\music\*.* recursively to the other person. Sending 4000 files this way would be VERY, VERY easy, especially on a LAN.
Also, there is a Get List function, which grabs a list of all the files a person has available to share. (By default installed to c:\filelib) Provided the person allows lists to be grabbed from them, once you have the list, you can download anything off of it.
Lastly, yes,
Re:Call the FBI. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since they were hired by the Recording industry who holds all the copyrights in question, wouldn't they be stealing from themselves (on an organizational level)?
It seems analogous to hiring a hacker to try to crack your network. While his actions would be illegal if he was unaffiliated with you, by hiring him, you've legitimized his actions which would otherwise have been illegal.
but IANAL...so there's a lot that's illegal these days that makes no sense to me.
Don't call for his arrest! (Score:5, Insightful)
He WANTS to spread the meme that downloading music off the internet is illegal. If a warrant goes out for his arrest because he hired some people to commit the "crime" of downloading MP3's, then his point will have been made. Transferring an MP3 file between computers is not a criminal act -- UNLESS the recipient is not licensed to have a copy of that content.
His implication that the results of hiring 3 people to do nothing but get MP3's all day long for $12/hr plus lodging can be extrapolated to represent the behavior of "millions of students and other computer users" is, of course, ridiculous.
Not using P2P clients? Oh my! (Score:5, Insightful)
P2P tools are just that. Tools. Like FTP, SCP, ICQ file transfer, AOL file transfer, &c. Their existence does not create piracy - it is just another way to do it. Resnet here experiences massively more traffic due to kazaa and audiogalaxy than FTP and SCP and I expect this is generally true. Combined with the fact that there's no money behind them, they are easy targets for the huge media companies. If AOL/TW and thee RIAA members were really serious, they'd sue AOL/TW and Microsoft too.
I'm torn between wanting them to cut it out because it's just silly and wanting them to win and teach people to be a little careful and use encryption. Spreading packets all over the internet with your IP and the names of the copyrighted works you're downloading is just stupid. People are paying attention. My ISP told me flat-out that they've sold their souls (isn't that a good Slashdot phrase?) to Sony (among others, though only Sony was mentioned by name) who analyzes every packet they handle searching for copyrighted works.
Re:Is it technically considered theft... (Score:2, Insightful)
The RIAA owns nothing, save for office space, furniture, office supplies, and such.
Not true. They also own Fritz Hollings [foxnews.com]... well, they have a timeshare agreement with the MPAA, anyway.
Re:Call the FBI. (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey, back off, dude. It's their law, they bought it, and they can break it if they want to!
Please, keep your shitty music (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him (Score:3, Insightful)
It's best to leave things the way that they are. He paid these kids to download music and then admitted to millions of people he did it, and wasn't punished. Obviously, if he was so brazen about it and wasn't punished, it wasn't something wrong...
Lying is not the issue (Score:4, Insightful)
Not a damn thing.
How many people watched that speech? Million--Tens of millions--Maybe hundreds of millions. How many people know about him being debunked as a fraud? Perhaps a million if you stretch the figures.
It's not a great leap to assume he willfully lied -- and why shouldn't he? It was a carefuly crafted gamble. So what if even half of the people who watched that speech believe he's a charalatan? He has still indoctrinated is message in the remainder of the people who don't know any better.
He either lied or didn't bother to follow the real figures, not because thought he could get away with it, but because he knows that it doesn't matter if he gets away with it or not. Public relations people everywhere know that a lie is only a lie if you know about it.
Re:Uncrackable digital format (Score:2, Insightful)
I know your trying to be funny but there are record players with lasers. They are quite useful because they don't wear out your records
Re:The DOJ should now be forced to prosecute him (Score:2, Insightful)
yes...
but if he paid them to do it, then it's not reallly non-commercial, is it?
but.... but.... but.... (Score:4, Insightful)
What exactly does this prove? The guy's point was how easy it is to hand music to other people over the internet, and how simple it is for people to acquire things that have never before been so readily available.
Whoever wrote this is nitpicking to avoid the matter at hand.
6,000 songs to UCLA? Ha (Score:2, Insightful)
I say it's BS. There is no way in hell that a couple UCLA students downloaded 6,000 songs in 2 or 3 days. I hang out in the dorms there all the time and know what the connection is like.
Re:Recording Artists Coalition (Score:2, Insightful)
http://www.iuma.com/
and
http://www.earbuzz.com/
I listen to all kinds of stuff from IUMA from the classical "Mechanical Piano" where top modern pianists reprise Beethoven, Motzart and Schubert greats, to the progressive rock My Fine Friend Phil album.
I even bought My Freind Phil from earbuzz.com I thought it was so good.
The more support like this that artists get, the less likely they will want/need to sell out to an RIAA affiliated company.
The fewer good artists they have the better off we all are.