Comparing the RIAA To "The Sopranos" 193
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to commentator Therese Polletti at Dow Jones MarketWatch, 'the RIAA's tactics are nearly as bad as the actions of mobsters, real or fictional. The analogy comes up easily and frequently in any discussion of the RIAA's maneuvers.' Among other things she cites the extortionate nature of their 'settlement negotiations' pointed out by Prof. Bob Talbot of the University of San Francisco School of Law IP Law Clinic. His student attorneys are helping private practitioners fight the RIAA, and the the illegality of the RIAA's use of unlicensed investigators. She goes on to cite the fact that the RIAA thinks nothing of jeopardizing a student's college education in order to make their point, as support for the MAFIAA/Mafia analogy."
There is a difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
The biggest difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait a minute... (Score:2, Insightful)
Laws (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080320-pc-game-developer-has-radical-message-ignore-the-pirates.html [arstechnica.com]
Basically the message is that pirates were never customers and can therefore be ignored. I would take it one step further and say that piracy is a form of free advertising. More than once I've bought cd's based on mp3's I heard. The music and movie industry suits are a bunch of whining dinosaurs; all they need to do is make the disks worth buying by offering additional content liek posters, stickers, etc..
I don't know (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Laws (Score:5, Insightful)
Gambling, prostitution, drugs, those profitable activities are controlled by organized crime.
MAFIAA Acronym (Score:2, Insightful)
While I agree that their tactics are ridiculous, to compare them to a criminal organization whose actions include murder, drug dealing, burglary, kidnapping, arson, and other felonious crimes is ridiculous - it doesn't advance the debate, it distracts from it!
Business is Business (Score:4, Insightful)
The mob is just a business like any other. Every business-person makes their own decision regarding how immoral/illegal they're willing to act in order to make a profit. Some stop just past shady insider trading practices, others go all the way past fraudulent accounting, while others still go all the way to violent crimes, either explicitly or implicitly.
The RIAA and MPAA fall somewhere between Enron (and their ilk) and the diamond industry (probably leaning closer to the Enron side), but certainly with a number of mob-style tactics thrown in, without going all the way to actual violence.
Re:Any ordinary trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Well it depends on how you define "kill for profit." If you mean kill with a GLOC or a piano wire, then no, most monopolized industries don't kill for profit. But if you account for deaths that the company (or group of companies) could have prevented either through action or inaction but didn't expressly for the purpose of profit then I think you're actually out on very thin ice here. The monolithic pharmaceutical and health insurance companies knowingly "kill" thousands of people each year for profit. The manufacturers of cigarettes knowingly "kill" millions of people each year for profit. If you brought these charges up in court, it'd be 'wrongful death' instead of 'murder', but killing is killing and dead is dead as far as most people are concerned.
Re:Any ordinary trust (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:MAFIAA Acronym (Score:4, Insightful)
You make fine distinctions about what is good/right and what is not. Technically, you might be right. Morally, you are wrong. They use non-criminal organizations to do their dirty work and ruin plenty of lives. They use organizations that support and partake in the crimes you condemn. Guilt by association? Yes. Bad laws are worse than no laws, and those that enforce bad laws are worse than those who break them. Long before "We the people" stand up together and say NO more, there will have to be those of us who say it first.
War criminals are told that 'following orders' is not an excuse for doing bad things. The grueling financial and moral beating that defendants are taking from the good guys on behalf of the **AA is immoral. Following orders is not an excuse. The bad guys have always taken advantage of the legal system whenever possible. Someone mentioned the Untouchables earlier. They made their name by nabbing gangsters for things like tax evasion rather than the crimes they were really wanted for. Yes, the bad guys DO abuse the system and use it against good people. It is not ridiculous to think of the **AA's tactics as mafia like or to liken them to the mafia. The mafia does not kill everyone they come in contact with, nor do they sell drugs to everyone that they see. Extortion is one of their businesses, they are famous for it. So it **IS** a fair comparison and your statements otherwise are what distracts from the debate.
You might have a stronger case if the **AA had disbursed some of the money they won through extortion like pre-litigation back to the artists. It's been 6 years plus and not a dime has gone to any artist. Even the artists are shouting they want to sue the **AA. [google it]
There is at this point, not one reason to feel sorry for the **AA or support them. They have already spent all their good will and continue to use mafia like tactics to push the law onto their side so they can oppressively enforce their business model on the population of the world, not just one country. It takes government collusion to force it on such a large part of the world. With the obviousness of that, how you can think of the **AA as anything different from the real mafia is beyond me. Different tactics don't make them better, just slightly different.
Re:Relativism (Score:5, Insightful)
Nope. They send the Sheriff to do it for them.
Sue you.
Bankrupt you.
Send the law to seize your assets.
You get evicted.
If you try to stay the sheriff's men will throw you out.
If you try to resist them they'll use as much force as necessary - including deadly force if your resistance appears to be a threat to them.
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Additionally, the music industry existed for promotion and distribution. Now that distribution is basically free, their only function is promotions. This puts the artists in the curious postition of being popular not due to their hype but their talent. Artists were never the ones getting paid from album sales anyway; the labels made the bulk of the money. Cut out the middleman by having bands sell mps'3 directly from a website and the money goes where it should-to the artists.
Artist may have to resort to actually PERFORMING in order to make money. Damn shame.
The industry ought to adjust to the reality on the ground: mp3's are advertising & thats all.
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:5, Insightful)
Furthermore, if you pirate it, you become proficient with it. So you give them mindshare.
So if you ever decide to use this software professionally, you will buy it. And you won't even consider purchasing anything else.
The software industry, in part, understands this and therefore does little to suppress home piracy of professional software. And that is why Windows was easy to pirate until it got to nearly every computer: now that you depend on it, we'll make you buy it.
Kind of like drug dealers — it's all free until you get hooked.
Indeed, strict enforcement of anti-piracy measures would really benefit F/OSS development, not the big companies.
is there anybody else? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is this association (RIAA - organized crime, criminals, etc.) stupid? I feel really stupid seriously considering this myself, but I guess I have to:
1. Organized crime deals mostly with illegitimate business, RIAA deals with a legit business.
2. Organized crime kills and maimes people, RIAA sues them for vast sums of money.
3. This association with its stupid accent on emotionality drives away from the real problems with RIAA. It is bloody not working!
The real problem is:
Why are you keep buying and listening to the stuff written by the people who are enslaved by RIAA? It is like buying sweatshop sweaters, except that in this case it's not sweatshops, but sweetshops - every artists dreams of being signed by the major label.
Why are you so addicted to this stuff anyway? Why do you have to listen every day to a new single or watch new movie? Have a life! The real reason why this thing is so bloated is stupid inability of recent consumer generation to act creatively and to entertain themselves. Buy a Guitar Hero and play yourself. Make music yourself, make videos yourself, make movies yourself. Listen and watch what other people like you did on youtube or in any other free, unlimited way... Why do you have to go down to the rock bottom of coach-potato entertainment where you do absolutely nothing and only consume entertaining stuff? This is not good for you, do you realize it?
Get on with your lives. Entertain yourself actively. Create yourself. You do not have to watch latest terminator movie ahead of time on torrents in order to create your own stuff.
It is more difficult but much more rewarding when you get appreciation of your family, of your friends, of your peers, of your social network, when you see your 5-digit number of views on youtube.com
Re:Wait a minute... (Score:4, Insightful)
The RIAA is well within their rights to pursue people they think have infringed on their copyrights. But they have to follow court procedures and the law when pursuing their rights. They have to file separate lawsuits for each defendant. They have to make sure that the person they are suing is the correct person. When they make mistakes, they should be diligent about dismissing. It seems apparent that they don't care.
That is why Tanya Andersen is seeking class action status. She was innocent. She tried reasoning with the and offered them her computer to inspect. Even when they inspected her computer and found nothing, they still tried to push her to pay and hinted that they might pursue her 9 year old daughter. It wasn't until 2 years after the start of the suit when they had to produce evidence to the judge did they finally dismiss:
Re:Change is needed (Score:4, Insightful)
I used to think that way when it was either PC DOS or MS DOS. I have since changed my ways for the better. There are several advantages. This supports monopolistic providers. It eliminates market competition and produces a monoculture.
I was faced with the Photoshop issue and resolved to find an alternative when the BSA started making noise. When they started getting really nasty, I knew it was time to comply with their demands while at the same time not supporting them in a free market. I bought a digital camera which came bundled with ArcSoft's photo editor. It did the touch-up stuff I needed to do including cropping, red eye removal, and changing the resolution for a web page. It was legal and did the job. Now I am an avid Gimp user.
My photo editing has been followed by OS choice, Office suite choice and other choices. The end result is now instead of insanely priced monopoly products, the market is filled with viable alternatives with few exceptions. As the alternatives grow, the high priced stuff retires or is repriced into more attractive price points. For example, have you seen the price for PhotoShop Elements? They are still trying to hold on to the cash cow, but it is being eroded, not by piracy, but by the competition. MS is having the same problem with buggy Vista, OSX and Ubuntu. MS Office and Open Office, etc.
Don't pirate and support the monopoly vendor's products. Use the alternatives and make a rich field of usable products.
When I first got into stage lighting, I loved the demo of Martin's Procenieum. At $2500 a copy, it was out of the question. It is now NLA for good reason. Instead I use FreeStyler with a $60 USB interface.
http://www.digimedia-mls.com/dmxplus/ [digimedia-mls.com] This died with Windows 95. At a good price point, this could have grown into a great product. The clones ate it for lunch.
http://users.pandora.be/freestylerdmx/ [pandora.be] Freestyler Rocks and is free.
http://www.dmxcontrol.de/joomla/?lang=en [dmxcontrol.de] DMX control another freeware console rocks, but has some language translation problems.
Manolator is a pared down version of Procenium that also rocks. A lightshow on a DMX lighting system instead of buying the Lights-o-Rama package is possible if you already have DMX dimmers. Load up your song in Winamp, set the events to time to the music and rock on. This also uses inexpensive interfaces or you can build your own.
http://www.freedmx.com/ [freedmx.com]
An here is a free drop-in replacement for the $2500 software. Nice easy to use console. Free....
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html#screenshot [chromakinetics.com] Screenshot.. Requires giving an email address to receive.
http://www.chromakinetics.com/DMX/StageConsole.html [chromakinetics.com]
Avoiding piracy and shopping for good alternatives is legal and sticks the high prices right where it counts.
Overpriced simple software quickly becomes surrounded by clones.
If you want a full featured DMX software desk, there are many packages from about $200 to several grand. Only spend the money if the competition won't do the job. Don't pirate it.
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who listens to the mp3's are potential customers. Share it and another potential customer hears the song. Repeat several thousand times and you have bona fide "buzz". Someone will buy the disk, go to the show, whatever. Money is made.
How about this: If I distribute mp3's over the internet, the record companies should pay ME for helping to advertise and distribute their content. How's that?
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:3, Insightful)
You are making exactly the same arguments as the RIAA regarding "lost sales". By your argument borrowing a book from a library is theft. Copyright law as it is currently being interpreted by the RIAA and MPAA fails to recognize the intrinsic value of the propagation of culture. Besides, the "law of supply and demand" works regardless of legality. If YOU make your work available for free from your own website you could generate advertising revenue from traffic AND completely negate any need for piracy in the first place. If I liked your work I would probably purchase hard copies and have done exactly that in the past for books, films, music AND games. Personally I feel the purchased versions to be a better value.
Equating piracy with theft on a one for one basis is bad business; all you do is piss people off and those people are your customers.
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:2, Insightful)
Look, I understand your point, but you should reevaluate the copying = stealing line. I am giving examples, not because the specific software is important. Think about 10 years ago when Photoshop was thousands of dollars. There was no GIMP or lower priced alternative. I would NEVER pay thousands of dollars for Photoshop. Therefore there is no sale lost, because I would not save for it, would NOT EVER buy it at that price.
Of course there are immoral people in the world, but to argue that copying = stealing is a false generalization of a very new and complex phenomenon. The point is, copying IP does not always cause a loss of sale and in some cases creates a sale. This property of IP is not like physical property at all.
Re:Can we at least hope... (Score:2, Insightful)