Recording Industry's Unexpected Benefit from P2P 335
Matthew Schultheis writes: "Yahoo / AP is reporting that the record industry is using the files traded on Kazza et al. to track where music is popular. It turns out that they even pay for this information. 'It's the most vast and scalable sample audience that the world has ever seen'" Now if they could only use this data to somehow put out better music...
Benefitting from a crime... (Score:5, Interesting)
(Just as we do not, for ethical reasons, use information that the Nazis gleaned from their experimentation on the Jews in World War II. Clearly the magnitude is nowhere near the same, but the underlying ethical principle is similar.)
Why doesn't an enterprising label..... (Score:5, Interesting)
No Need For Better Music (Score:3, Interesting)
If telephones had never been broken up, would we have ever had cellphones today except maybe in Europe? A powerful media outlet company has even more and broader powers than other sorts of monopolies, because of better access and because they're business is controlling what people want and think. I truly don't think that the music industry is evil, but they're as inertia-bound as any other large incestuously linked series of codependent corporations. If suing customers and softcore porn Britney clones make shareholders happy then thats what we get.
Hacking the Tracking (Score:3, Interesting)
Now there's an idea, we could create a company that indy groups pay to have their songs spike higher in the download charts. Nothing illegal about it (well Kazaa's owners might not like it), since you wouldn't actually download the files. Ahhh, to toy with the minds of the RIAA, it'd be such fun. :)
Skewed sample? (Score:3, Interesting)
Also, with these lawsuits going on, isn't that also going to affect the sample pool (by selecting out those computer savvy enough to change their shared folders, and increasing the proportion of people outside the USA)?
Hate to do this to you guys.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Marketing? (Score:3, Interesting)
I dunno, but I might just be willing to give them all the marketing data/interviews they need if I didn't have to worry about lawsuits or anything like that and got to continue to download all the free music I want.
Oh wait, they can get the marketing data AND sue us, so I guess its more profitable that way.
Re:Who do they pay? (Score:2, Interesting)
The hypocracy of the RIAA to condemn P2P as an illegal activity and then actually use it towards its own gains just further confirms its selfish motives.
I'm not an expert in US law by any means, but can't this be useful in court against the RIAA somehow?
wow (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Benefitting from a crime... (Score:5, Interesting)
i don't know why you feel you have to clarify time and again that you do not condone or approve or whatever... the nazis were a product of a situation and an era... the "final solution" if such a thing existed was a result of the age of reason that saw such a course of action as rational... the catholic church and pope weren't even vocal enough about it... now some people continue to deny much of the atrocities and say they were grossly exagerated... i don't know about that, maybe, maybe not... but i know one thing... losers tend to be vilified and winners write history books...
Just consider for example the Tuskegee Syphilis experiments; google for it... For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 399 illiterate black men who were lied to and a disease such as syphilis was deliberately allowed to take its awful course on them without treatment. here [infoplease.com]
While you're at it you might wanna also google for the CIA mind control experiments during the cold war... they experimented on soldiers and mental patients, gave them high doses of drugs, hundreds of electric shock treatments per individual within a few days... and stuff like that...
most importantly, had you or the person you responded to been living in nazi germany, you would've probably done the same. Just see the Milgram experiments
don't exonerate yourself; given the situation, we're all guilty
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you'll find that we're genetically hardwired to be co-operative social animals, even when it's not in our best interest to be.
Scientific studies have shown [and I'm sure someone can find links] that people want to co-operate with others, despite it making better sense to be selfish.
Selfishness may provide benefits, but these are generally short-term. To claim it's a virtue, is crass.
You claim the poster to whom you respond doesn't understand what drives the world, but I doubt you have any a clearer view.
Selfish acquisition drives some people, but to claim that that's all there is by way of world-wide motivation is ignorant.
Solidarity does indeed exist, and is responsible for the great pool of knowledge we have; science, medicine, spirituality and culture.
While we're on this topic (Score:4, Interesting)
The same happens with musicians. They don't tend to know about this. Especially young, talented people who don't necessarily get much chance to get on the internet. I remember as a teenager I would read in all the music magazines about the dream of one day being signed to a major. Nowadays to me that means mostly negative things - problems. Like a big bank loan and surviving on gigs, giving away your rights etc. But to others the dream goes on.
Is there a good URL to point people to so that they can get clear concise guidance on why *not* to sign for one of the RIAA companies? Or even that showed what the options are, and examples of people like Ani DiFranco or companies like magnatunes and how to achieve their musical dreams and still avoid bad business decisions.
The URLs [boycott-riaa.com] I find are always centred on how bad the RIAA is, or on the consumer side but there isn't to my knowledge a good musician centred site...
Ale
Re:Eh? (Score:3, Interesting)
Vampire bats have notorious energy demands. They can die if they do not feed on a daily basis. Now occasionally there are nights when a vampire bat fails to find food. So what normally happens is that the bat is able to bum food off of a non-related buddy. Obviously, that buddy is losing resources when it gives food away. But the lost in the buddy is trivial compare to the gain in the bat that didn't find food that night.
People who say selfishness is a virtue implicitly assume that resources and need-fulfillment are linear. In nature, the resources and need-fulfillment relationship is asymptotic; if you already have amount of resources, the need that each additional resource fulfill is marginal. In other words, $1 to a person who only has $1 is a big deal but $1 to a person who has $4 is less of a big deal especially if the cost of not have $1 is death.
Going back to our bat example, let's say night two rolls along and the buddy bat fails to find food that night. Let's also say that the bat who didn't find food the first night was successful. Buddy bat tries to bum food off of the latter bat. The latter bat can either give or not give. If the latter bat chooses to give, then all is well for the buddy bat. However, if the latter bat decides not to give, then the buddy bat dies. The latter bat will invariably give. The reason is because the rest of bat community will black-list the latter bat for being selfish. There will come a night where the latter bat will not find food and will not be able to get help from others. On an individual level, selfishness is a bad thing. I leave it up to you to draw the parallels in humans.
Do a search on google for "vampire bats altruism" for more details. If you are interested on the evolution of altruism, go google for "david sloan wilson". Evolution is not always about being selfish.