Recordable Media a Bigger Threat Than Filesharing? 682
Matilda the Hun writes "The Register is reporting on the RIAA claims that recordable media is more of a source of piracy than P2P networks. From the article: 'The RIAA's chief executive, Mitch Bainwol, last week said music fans acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorized downloads, Associated Press reports. According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.'"
The RIAA mindset (Score:5, Insightful)
Canadian-Style Media Tax (Score:3, Insightful)
BAN IT! (Score:0, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
They aren't stabbing in the dark at all. These have been slow and calculated moves! They have been planning on attacking the P2P networks, getting people to switch to legally downloaded media formats (which basically eliminate distribution costs as the RIAA doesn't even pay for it), and now they want to end recordable media!
According to Bainwol, in turn citing figures from market watcher NPD, 29 per cent of the recorded music obtained by listeners last year came from content copied onto recordable media. Only 16 per cent came from illegal downloads.
So, now that they believe that they have lessened the impact of downloaded music by finally "opening" up to the desire of the market and selling their wares, they have decided to turn their FUD campaign towards recordable media.
Yes, we should all bend over backwards to the wishes, whines, and desires of a small group of "individuals" that are just trying to protect their financial interests, right? Why should we have any fair-use rights? That doesn't help the RIAA's bottom line does it... We need to be re-educated into believing that fair-use doesn't exist. If you want to play your purchased music on your portable player *and* use a CD you have to buy it twice! Once for the MP3 player and once for the CD player.
DO NOT PURCHASE SONGS BACKED BY THE RIAA. It is only increasing their finances which are used to back legislation and smear campaigns to further erode fair-use rights.
My life completely changed when I got a DVD burner (Score:1, Insightful)
It is funny though, all of the DVDs I rent are copies anyway, so I guess it doesn't really make a difference. And certainly not for the RIAA.
But for those of you who don't support the RIAA, grow some balls and stop buying their products. Seriously, this is the only way that these things are going to end. BOYCOTT! it is ok, it is your right, get to it!
Spin Spin Spin (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA uses unprecidented strongarm tactics to essentially preserve their outdated business model in law. They charge very high prices for CDs, restrict their usage, and then wonder why their customers aren't happy. Grow up.
On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law. I also hear that music sucks these days, and it's not worth buying. Yet the same people fill their hard drives with this "crap". That's hypocritical. Grow up.
So where's the middle ground? One side wants too much money, and the other side doesn't want to pay anything. Good luck with that!
Bullshit! (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm waiting for the day that they want to start charging us for humming or singing a song that we happen to have heard enough to have it memorized.
what a joke (Score:2, Insightful)
That means p2p as a problem is a joke, and old-guard music distributors are so self-absorbed they pay attention to only themselves.
(IOW, just because a narcissist has a bullhorn doesn't mean he's right.)
Is this a joke? Look at the MEASURE! (Score:4, Insightful)
"acquire almost twice as many songs from illegally duplicated CDs as from unauthorized download"
Wait? Really? So when people copy 16 tracks on an album compared to downloading 1, the numbers of the former exceed the latter? They say this so they can go after yet another target- writable media. Though how many of those tracks get listened to? When people download their favourite song, they often don't download the whole album (though some do).
So now the RIAA has a new target now that they've lost economies of scale attacking P2P... then they'll go after P2P again. Joy!
This is useless.
-M
Tax would kill Free Music movements. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, and a tax would be the surest thing to kill such a Free-Music movement - because suddenly the Free/Open Music would be forced to subsidize the labels.
But ...? (Score:1, Insightful)
Do it for the kids! (Score:3, Insightful)
This is the same RIAA that sells our children Devil's music!
Where is the extreme right when you need them??
WTF--I pay them royalties, how is this "piracy?" (Score:5, Insightful)
Whenever I buy an "Audio CD-R" or "Music CD-R" the price includes a royalty payment. The royalty payment is set at 2% of the manufacturer's revenue (not profit, revenue) and deposited with the U. S. Copyright Office, which in turn pays it into other funds in a complicated way.
According to the RIAA's own frickin' website [riaa.com], two thirds of it goes into a "Sound Recordings Fund" administered by an entity called the AARC which distributes it to artists, and the rest gets distributed to copyright holders.
So how the *&$%&! is this piracy? What's their beef, anyway? They're not getting enough? It should all go to the RIAA instead of some it going to artists? Nothing should ever be copied by anyone, no way, no how?
I mean, just what is their problem?
Re:Let's abandon them then, and do it Right. (Score:4, Insightful)
Thanks, at least someone has been paying attention to what I've been saying all these years! Do not buy music that is backed by the RIAA. Only support the bands that allow the free distribution of their music.
There are already plenty of torrent trackers and listing services out there that do exactly what you propose (and I have listed them before). The "madness" you claim might exist, won't. Artists are still taught to believe what the RIAA is feeding them and it will likely never been overflowing like you hope.
e-tree and dimeadozen along w/various others already take care of the tracking and listing. We just need more bands to allow the trading of their content.
If the RIAA gets their way and either taxes recordable media out of the realm of usefulness or somehow gets it so protected it violates fair-use, then we need to bring back the P2P networks and get people to realize that there are viable performers out there that are releasing their stuff to the public for free!
Dog bites man (Score:3, Insightful)
If, for some reason, teenagers want the new Korn disk, they pool they're money and buy one, burn two. Can you blaim them when a little pile of digital plastic is $17 at retail?
While it's old news on
These days, rather than raising the money and paying to record and mix in a dedicated room with some professionals, I track and mix most everything at home.
Good or bad for the music? You decide (probably both). Like it or not that's how we're going to do it now.
Aside to any audio techs still reading: I recently heard of an auction where a Studer 2" machine went for 8 grand (!?!?). I heard after the auction or I'd have a Studer in my living room.
Obviously only computer people pirate! (Score:3, Insightful)
They also need to be careful with respect to DRM. As the article states, it's only really the Microsoft platform that supports DRM and thus, ironically, by employing such copy-protection schemes will likely cause some buyers to return their CDs for a refund, and therefore loose the money for the artist, given that a lot of people do not necessarily listen to music straight from the CD. I'm an example of that - my (non-computer) CD player bearly gets a look in these days. I buy a CD not only for the sound quality but to ensure that I pay what I get for (sort of a backwards sentence!) However, I will then rip it to OGG etc for use on my computer and portable music player and the CD then gets stored away.
I download music. I find it a great way to discover different bands etc. If I like the music I buy the CD. Yes, I actually go out and buy that dangerous media of CD. If I don't like the music, it gets deleted there and then.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for payment to the artists etc. I fully support it, which is borne out in my buying of the music if I like it. However, it's the overstated/exaggerated comments by the RIAA that really annoy me and lead me to believe what a generally screwed up world we live in at times. If the RIAA are so concerned about ensuring that artists receive their relevant monies, then do the RIAA soley follow this practice/creed outside of the music industry (only buying FairTrade [fairtrade.org.uk]products, for example)?
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
"I know I'd buy more music (cd, mp3 or ?) if it was reasonably priced. $1 dollar/mp3 and $12.99 or more for a CD?? I'm sure they have some justification for the pricing, but... obviously something's amiss."
Amazingly enough, at $12.99 per CD, record companies typically net significantly less than 20% at the end of the year. If you were to plot the net margins of all the companies from which you buy goods and services, CDs would be on the far left of the graph. Choosing to pay or not pay for CDs is one thing, but it's not accurate to state that CD prices are "unreasonable" if one also happily buys food at the supermarket, clothing at the mall, PCs (including parts and accessories), and countless other items from industries that typically enjoy net margins well in excess on what the record industry relies on.
The "but I only pay $0.25 for CD-Rs, so $13 for a CD is an outrage! Bok bok bok!" kids are missing the deadly difference between gross margin and net margin. The $13 you pay for a CD covers all the operating costs (salary, overhead including shrinkage, advertising) of the retailer, as well as the distributor (5% right there, if disty margins are the same in the record industry as they are in the computer peripheral business), and must cover the cost of shipping, returns (an educated guess is that it's about 10% in the record industry), price protections (probably another 10%), co-op advertising (another 5% - 10%), the salary of everybody at the record company and studio who worked on it in some way, royalties for the composers and songwriters, and of course the COGS, which are about 25% of the sell-in price to disti. This is why even at low-overhead indy record labels, a CD must sell about 10K pieces before it breaks even (that number is said to be 100K for the big RIAA companies).
In short, simple bromides like "CD prices should be more reasonably priced" won't cut it. I've no doubt that you and others would like them to be cheaper (I wish lots of things were cheaper) but a sub-20 point net margin is certainly reasonable in our economy.
As for online music sales... Apple has sold 50 million tracks, and the online music industry is growing logarithmically. It may be hard to convince them that their product is not "reasonably priced." The biggest mistake we can make is thinking the enemy is stupid. You can bet that Apple and the record companies have done the requisite surveys and research on elasticity and demand to know that $1.00 is the right price to charge, and that charging $0.90 or $0.80 will not result in higher net revenues. I know I sure wouldn't buy more if they were a dime cheaper -- I don't lose any sleep over a buck a track. I'll take your word for it that you would, but Apple's research appears to indicate that there more consumers like me than you.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not, as you pointed out. You can give your friend your book, and you can give your friend your CD. What you can't do is make a copy of the book, or a copy of your CD, and give that to your friend while you keep the original.
Really, it's not that hard to understand.
The start of a new business model (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't say you were going to like it. I just said they were working on it.
There's also a lot of music released without the RIAA, from local and regional bands. You can get that stuff from myspace, from CDs sold on their web sites and at concerts, and even with their blessing from P2P. (I have it straight from a musician friend of mine that you shouldn't have to pay to download one song.)
Of course you've never heard of any of these, because the RIAA's business model depends on you accepting what they advertise to you. If you want to deal a blow to the RIAA's business model, go out to your local club or browse the web for a while. And you can do it legally, too.
A bad business model is its own punishment. Let them flounder. Unless you happen to like what they're feeding you and you just don't feel like paying for it, in which case I call you "hypocrite". Opting out of the RIAA's business model isn't at all hard.
Re:News Flash: Comptuers Are Used.... (Score:3, Insightful)
They've already managed that. This is what "Trusted computing" and DRM is all about...
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
LARCENY - Illegal taking and carrying away of personal property belonging to another with the purpose of depriving the owner of its possession. The wrongful and fraudulent taking and carrying away by one person of the mere personal goods of another from any place, with a felonious intent to convert them to the taker's use and make them his property without the consent of the owner.-Lectlaw [lectlaw.com]
Copying copyright music does not "deprive the owner of its possession", and therefore it is not theft. Do your homoework next time.
Re:CD-R tax (Score:5, Insightful)
Doctor Evil, That Already Happened. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
So... when is breaking of the law justified? For a significant period of time, the return of runaway slaves to thier "owners" was the law in the United States. Law or no law, a lot of brave people risked incarceration [wikipedia.org] to smuggle these people to freedom, and ultimately the law was changed.
Maybe $12 CD's aren't quite as morally repugnant as slavery, but "the law is the law and you should follow it whatever it says" is ridiculous.
Note to trigger-happy FBI enforcers - I don't pirate music, I just don't pass judgment on those who do.
There is only one child in this argument (Score:5, Insightful)
"Piracy" increases sales! Roger McGuinn(sp? The old "Byrds" band from the 60s) said outright that "piracy" via the old, dead Napster revitalized his career. The labels had writen him off.
This is the REAL reason they want to kill P2P, not "piracy." P2P DOES affect the labels bottom line.
Now, this sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't. The majors have radio sewn up (see "payola"). The radio plays what the RIAA labels tell it to.
But there's a new kid - P2P. If I download Metallica, I'm likely to buy Matallica. However, if I download someone not on the radio, they don't get that Metallica sale because I already spent the fifteen bucks on two indie CDs.
It's not about lost sales to "thieves," it's about lost sales to the competetion.
P2P is to the RIAA what FOSS is to Microsoft: a possible monopoly breaker. You can see why they hate it.
The cost of doing business (Score:3, Insightful)
It doesn't matter how the RIAA is to be compensated for anything anyone does that infringes on their profit model. Whatever compensation they are given, it will never be enough because they will continually lie about the damage being done until everyone that hums a tune to themselves has to pay for each note in a song!
People will do what they do. They are making more than enough money and if they decide the business isn't profitable then let them LEAVE the business as surely someone else will pick up that ball and run with it under the current conditions.
If the RIAA wants to "tax" our blank media, then they'd damn well give us a carte blanche to make all the "illegal copies" we want without fear of prosecution since we'd be paying for our crimes in advance of our committing them.
That said, the RIAA knows their customers and the people at large. They should just forget about it and leave their profits where they are... they're "good enough" damnit.
Re:Let's abandon them then, and do it Right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Open-source software exists against a background of closed-source software. Many people who work on open source have day jobs writing closed-source software, or get to open-source part of their work while closing the parts that are specific to their clients. The most successful bits of open source, Apache and Linux, are heavily subsidized by large corporations that also write closed-source software.
Open source has done well, but it's far from replacing closed-source, and I believe it would slit its own throat if it did.
Music, on the other hand, requires no support network. Go out and download music from iRate or any of the other myriad places you can find free music. Even better, find a band you like and actually buy their CD.
Finding a band you like is a challenge, but it always has been. The RIAA has made it easy on you by buying up all the radio time and making huge marketing efforts. The ideas you mention are good starts, but the best advertising for a band is always word of mouth.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Theft Arguement (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course it's not theft. The penalties for copyright infringement are much steeper!
Will the RIAA ever alienate us completely? (Score:3, Insightful)
I know it's an idealistic thought - but now the technology is available and the internet makes it technically plausible - I would think it'd be only sweet poetic justice that it'll do them and the companies behind them in.
It sickens me when I think that they'll still control music in 20,30,40, or 50 years with their righteous airs and the arrogant expectations that they should sell more every year no matter what garbage they push.
Middle ground (Score:4, Insightful)
Lower prices?
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Who wants middle ground?
I buy quite a lot of CDs (20 to 50 per month). The RIAA could consider me one of their best customers (even with over half my purchases going to indie labels), except that I deliberately buy only used discs. Why? The RIAA has basically shot themselves in the foot, in three ways:
Technologically, I loathe DRM; although I have yet to find a disc I can't rip, the mere fact that they would try to prevent me from using music I buy (and spare me the "owned-vs-licenced" semantic BS - to the typical consumer, if I pay cash for a physical product that doesn't have a return date on it, I "own" it) however the hell I want, very much offends me.
Politically, I don't like the bullying tactics of the RIAA, nor do I like their constant attempts to legislate their business model into what amounts to perpetual profit for no further work input. Although I can't hurt them all that much, I certainly won't help pay for their war-on-the-little-guy.
Economically, the most simple, they charge too much for no good reason. Do they have that right? Yes, certainly, they could charge $500 per CD if they so desired. But perception matters quite a lot - Even nonhuman primates will petulantly turn their noses at a known bad deal ("tolerable" vs "preferred" food as reward for doing something, when they've seen someone else get the preferred reward for the same task). Tapes cost around ten times as much to manufacture as CDs, yet cost half as much? Keep your lettuce, and stack your damned colored blocks by yourself!
So, who wants a middle ground? I say, Screw the RIAA. Let 'em go under. The artists will still create, they just won't have so many mob-affiliated middlemen taking a cut of the till. And thanks to the internet, the artists can actually do just that, in a manner far more effective than the old standby of offering tapes/CDs for sale at their concerts.
and the other side doesn't want to pay anything
No, one side wants too much control, and the other side wants the same "fair use" rights they've had all along. I consider the "money" part of this issue the least important.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Really, it's not that hard to understand.
I don't agree that your proposition is so easy to agree with and understand. CD's are inherently fragile so I have learned through repeated experience that using the original disc is foolhardy. It will fail and the only remedy available is to purchase another one.
So if I were to lend a CD to a friend I would certainly only do so with a copy of the original. As long as the replacement cost for failed media remains about $15 - $20 there is no way I would willingly agree to taking that risk.
Of course in real life I have lent out books and CDs never to see them again. That is part of the charm of the whole social process. But if I were to analyze and act rationally I would only lend copies of CD's. I'm less concerned about books because that media is not subject to the same catastrophic failure as aluminized plastic.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:2, Insightful)
So... if it turned out that those CD's were manufactured in a slave labor camp overseas, in gross violation of human rights, then would you consider it ok to conflate the two and pirate them?
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:2, Insightful)
I havn't bought a RIAA CD in years. But I havn't pirated anything in years either.
Same here. There seem to be many people who boycott the RIAA and just refuse to give them any money, but turning around and downloading songs off of P2P networks just makes the RIAA right when they talk about downloading leading to decreased sales.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's one datapoint for you [wwbw.com]; you can find others. (For example, "The Very Best of Kenny Rogers" on Amazon: $5.95 on tape versus $9.95 on CD). Based on what I've seen, margins on CDs must top 50% -- unless record companies take a significant loss on cassettes.
Re:There is only one child in this argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Why join 'em when you can beat 'em?
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, I think you are missing the point. Calling it "theft" inaccurately frames the infraction as something universally regarded as immoral: the taking of another's property. Copyright infringement falls very much in a gray area. Heck, the very notion of copyright didn't even exist for the majority of recorded history. The fact that copyright infringement is currently a crime doesn't automatically promote it to the same level as theft. The justification for breaking the law is that the law is bad. Legality and morality are not always 1:1.
Besides, you took the definition for larceny, not necessarily theft. Also, there are legal definitions and social definitions, they vary in accuracy and meaning.
Yeah, you can easily muddle the argument with non-legal usages of the word "theft", but they're essentially irrelevant to the question of the legality of copyright infringement, and the morality aspect is purely a matter of opinion. No reasonable person would ever attempt to claim legal or moral equivalence for a vernacular usage (e.g. "That bitch stole my boyfriend" is not rational debate), so claiming the OP could have been referring to common usage when it was a clear reference to debate. Clearly, society does not agree on that copyright infringement is the moral equivalent of theft, otherwise there'd be a whole lot less of it. Social mores are a consensual thing-- they don't exist on their own.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:There is only one child in this argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Your logic is flawed. GP says that P2P grants independent artists exposure that they would not otherwise have, which translates to sales. Label artists already have plenty of exposure - in fact, perfect exposure, because they can partically determine who fails and who succeeds depending on who they decide to promote. Those in a strong or monopolistic market position always use different tactics than those in a weak position.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
So is duplicating some of a book.
The monopoly provided by copyright is there for one reason and one reason only: promoting science and the "useful arts".
The RIAA and MPAA and others (including the software industry) have perverted copyright to promote their own interests.
Unless we fight, we will continue to lose ground.
Re:CD-R tax (Score:3, Insightful)
"And what about us poor schmucks who buy blank CDs for purposes other than music piracy?"
It's easy, at least in the US -- avoid the CD-Rs labelled "music" or "audio" and you'll do fine. The only difference is a bit of encoding near the spindle that lets set-top CD burners recognize them. There is no levy in the US on general-purpose data CD-Rs (although I can't say the same for our friends in Canada).
"I don't want my CD-R purchases taxed more just because the RIAA is too stubborn to overhaul its business model."
We'll put it aside for a second that the large majority of the levy on audio CD-Rs goes to artists and musicians (an important point to understand for anybody who kneels at the altar of "artists good, record companies bad"). But can you elaborate on the business model to which you're referring? If you're referring to the "charge money for goods and services" model, it's undergone significant changes in the past ten years. CD prices have dropped almost 50%, and they've finally embraced online distribution, which is growing at a logarithmic rate. They're using the "carrot and stick" approach: sure, they're lowering prices and taking advantage of the demand for downloadable music, but they'll also sue people if they think it will ultimately help their bottom line. Likewise, if they get a small percentage of the levy charged on digital recording devices and media, it's all good. Just as in your household budget, more money is always better.
This is an approach taken by many businesses. For instance, if you ran a retail store, you'd consider running sales and selling high quality merchandise and doing advertising -- you're not relegated to picking just one strategy, and neither are record companies.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:4, Insightful)
CD -> Sharp implement
Book -> Hot implement, wet implement
If I lend a CD to a friend I do so with the implicit, unstated assurance that if they lose or damage it, they will buy me a new one. Exactly the same as if I lend them a book, or my car, all of which are liable to sudden catastrophic destruction in the right situation.
Libraries lend out original copies of books, and CDs, and DVDs, and other media. They don't seem to require special procedures due to the nature of the media.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:2, Insightful)
Considering there's no copying involved, I don't see how your analogy is the best put forward. Here's a better one: you ever watch football? When a receiver fails to make a catch for whatever reason, does that mean that the team lost yardage? Of course not, you can't "lose" something you never had in the first place.
So the sum total amount of money "lost to piracy" is zero and will always be zero. That doesn't mean it's not wrong or illegal, the same way arson manages to be wrong and illegal, even though it's not theft.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Once again, we have an activity, now copyright infringement due to filesharing, which currently is illegal and which millions of Americans do anyway. It's like being in the middle of Prohibition. Is one justified in breaking this law? No, but neither is one wrong to want to fileshare. Perhaps the nation's electorate will once again communicate what it wants to its government, over the objections of a vocal minority.
Finally! (Score:3, Insightful)
They [the RIAA] charge very high prices for CDs, restrict their usage, and then wonder why their customers aren't happy. Grow up.
Yes, but there is a perfectly ethical and legal way to fight this: simply don't buy the music. If Ford charged ridiculously high prices for their cars, don't buy them. But that doesn't mean that you now have a right to go steal these cars (yes, I know it's not perfectly analagous, which is a good segway to my next point
On the other hand, you have a multitude of excuses for piracy. The "copyright infringement isn't theft" is my favorite, as it in no way justifies breaking of the law.
"Theft" is a slightly inaccurate portrayal of copyright infringement. It is much more like counterfeiting, which I hope we all agree is and should be illegal. In a capitalist economy, you earn money for your work, and you can then convert money into stuff you want (like music) as a reward. No, it doesn't directly affect anyone negatively, but that is an extremely short-sighted view of it. If counterfeiting were legal and everyone did it, money would become worthless and the economy would become irrelevant.
Similarly, piracy music devalues music and means that there is less of a reward for those who do work. If you pirate music, then you are getting a reward without earning it.
In any case, discussion of the practical effects of the RIAA's licensing schemes are beside the deeper point. If you are one of the "information wants to be free" crowd that doesn't recognize intellectual property, then you have a much more fundamental disagreement with the RIAA. But if you do recognize intellectual property as a legitimate idea, then you have to accept the RIAA's licensing terms for what they are, whether you like them or not. These terms are and should be set by copyright holders (who are in this case the RIAA). If they are acceptable, buy the music. If they aren't, don't buy it. If you believe in copyright, but also believe that customers should be able to write arbitrary licenses for IP they don't own, you hold completely contradictory views.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:1, Insightful)
Digital Millennium fair use rights (Score:2, Insightful)
in the 80s and early 90s it was under the radar. Nowadays the RIAA are using the fight against filesharing and whatnot to push technology into a situation where you won't be able to copy between friends, not because of legislation but due to DRM.
Because they're evil? In a way. Because they can make more money that way? Absolutely. DRM of today tend to guarantee (within the limits of the technology) that the media isn't unauthorisedly copied, which means not copied at all most of the time. This leaves the rightsholders (the only people alllowed to copy) in charge of backups, but are they taking up on this responsibility? No.
Case in point: Apple's DRM model basically means you rent the music for a one time charge. They could just register who's bought what and let s/he dowload this again if the file is damaged or lost. But they don't. And Apple isn't even the baddest of the bunch in terms of fair use.Razor-sharp DRM requires a new similarily well-defined fair use right. We don't have that yet and won't get it short of a lot of ranting on the right people.
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, this is realistic advice.
It requires *we* change, however: seeking out the best Indie music, promoting it, listening to it, supporting the artists, and developing our tastes beyond the ,ainline music industry.
You know, there's a lot of great Indie music out there. I'm going to begin exploring some Indie artists and posting their music -- with permission -- to my weblog next month.
Let's get after it. As the Joker said, "Let's expand our minds."
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't going to stop there though. The RIAA and Co. consider the Constitution's Fair Use provisions to be their Public Enemy #1. When you listen to **IA execs talking about "if it breaks, you should buy another one from us" speech, that is in direct contradiction to Fair Use which explicitly allows a copy to avoid breakage.
In fact, part of the DMCA is technically in contradiction with Fair Use, as the DMCA says its illegal to circumvent copy-protection, even if it is to create a legal backup copy as Fair Use allows.
I'm certainly no fan of commercial thieves, and I don't download music illegally, but mark my word folks, the RIAA will not stop with the theives and the P2P's, their idea of a nirvana *requires* the destruction or neutralization of the Fair Use provisions of the Copyright Amendment. Like all obsolete industries in the past, they will desperately try to keep their high-return industry going for as long as they can, and like many of those past obsolete industries, they're going to try to buy a rejuvenated monopoly with the help of the government (read: buying Congressional representatives).
If they get their way, you will have to come to them when the CDs wear out because you won't legally be allowed to make copies, and I got a buck that says as soon as this happens, the quality (read: longevity) of CDs will mysteriously decline throughout the industry.....
Re:What a load of bull (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:RIAA should address the cause (Score:3, Insightful)