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P2P Music Sharing Remains Popular Despite RIAA 521

Posted by michael from the cultural-mores-not-subject-to-top-down-control dept.
KarmaOverDogma writes "The New York Times reports that the RIAA's attempts to cut down on (music) file sharing are slow to show any effect, as much of the public still considers the activity to be useful and/or acceptable. P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign."
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P2P Music Sharing Remains Popular Despite RIAA More

P2P Music Sharing Remains Popular Despite RIAA

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  • Article modded -1 unuseful link (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:49AM (#7003248)
    Here is a link that actually works [nytimes.com]

  • In case of slashdotting (Score:5, Funny)

    by Exiler ( 589908 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:50AM (#7003251)
    I've started hosting the article on Gnutella

  • Agenda (Score:5, Insightful)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:52AM (#7003270) Homepage Journal

    from the article: "What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish."

    Read as: "We want online music to be hosted by our business partners, protected by DRM and for which we get get paid every nickel we think we're due."

  • But that doesn't make it legal - so what's better? (Score:5, Informative)

    by turnstyle ( 588788 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:53AM (#7003278) Homepage
    But copyright infringement remains illegal. So, if you want file-sharing (of the infringing variety) to be legalized, you need new laws -- but will they actually be better? Check out Derek Slater [harvard.edu] on the topic.

    • Re:But that doesn't make it legal - so what's bett (Score:4, Informative)

      by xigxag ( 167441 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:24AM (#7003588)
      That's an interesting article, but it's not about what you say it's about.

      (It's about the EFF's shifting legal stance with respect to file sharing, not about whether or not new laws would be an improvement.)
    • Who cares about the law in this case? So if people don't care about the law, where is the difference to anarchy? I.e. it is a situation where there actualy is no law (yes, I belive that an unaccepted law, is the same as no law!) and many people like it this way and don't want to change it. No filesharer needs a new or changed don't "law", since the won't accept any law and continue sharing music, as everyone did, since recording audio was possible at home (i.e. tape-recorders). The it's RIAA who is in ne

  • Pirate! (Score:5, Funny)

    by FortKnox ( 169099 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:53AM (#7003280) Homepage Journal
    Y'arr, does any lad find this here news of pirates somewhat coincidental [talklikeapirate.com]? Today be talk-like-a-pirate day, it be!
    Offenders will get twenty lashes of the cat-o-nine tails or walkin da plank to Davey Jones' locker. Y'arrr!

    • Re:Pirate! (Score:2, Funny)

      by mrtroy ( 640746 )
      Aye Aye Matey!!

      If today be not talk-like-a-pirate day, all ye lads and lasses best be -100 Offtopic ye parent post.
      But shiver me timbers! Today be talk-like-a-pirate day, it be!
      Mod +1000 Pirate!
      And ye RIAA shall not slither y'ar greasy tentacles into me treasure! And keep ye hands off me lasses! Corporate whores!

    • Re:Pirate! (Score:3, Funny)

      by Dr Caleb ( 121505 )
      Yarrr, would you be the Dread Pirate Roberts of whom I've heard so much about?

      Me and me crew are wishin ta throw in with you. There's much plunder to be had on the North Saskatchewan this time o the year! I've a fast Marauder [kennybrown.com] and a fine crew!

      • Arrrr, Caleb! There be a shanty about a Pirate on the River Saskatchewan. I be downloading it now.

        Yeus, Captain Tractor be good music for today.

    • Re:Pirate! (Score:5, Funny)

      by Pinball Wizard ( 161942 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:19AM (#7003544) Homepage Journal
      Arrrr, I be Iron Morty Flint, and it shivers me timbers to think that 36 percent of those polled think file swapping is never acceptable. What's wrong with plundering a bit o' booty from time to time?

      Yarr, we pirates are not unlike the gangsta rappers the RIAA loves to promote as the icons of American culture. Avast, ye RIAA scum, see how we but speak the same language as ye do:

      fo'ties - bottles o' rum
      bling bling - booty
      Yo! - Avast!
      Homey - Matey
      Bee-atch - Scurvey dog
      Pop a cap in yo ass - Make ye walk the plank
      Word - Arrrrrrrrr
      Beat down - Keel haul
      Wack MC Land - lubber
      Playah - Swashbuckler
      Mack Daddy - Cap'n
      Jacking - Plundering
      Rap Sea - Shanties
      The joint - The brig
      Crew - Crew


      So let us be pirates, or we'll pop a cap in yo ass, er, I mean make ye walk the plank, arrrr.

      • Re:Pirate! (Score:3, Funny)

        by FortKnox ( 169099 )
        A direct order from yer Cap'n:
        Not one of ye scurvy dogs it to be givin Morty any more Rum. He be goin stark mad, and he be drinkin all the rum! Y'arr!

  • Let's pay the artists intstead... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pointbeing ( 701902 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:54AM (#7003288)
    I vote for embedding artist PayPal addresses in mp3s. Then we can send the money directly to the artist.

    I'd imagine the RIAA wouldn't think too kindly of this idea - but it is kinda fun to think about :)

    • Re:Let's pay the artists intstead... (Score:5, Funny)

      by mblase ( 200735 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:25AM (#7003600)
      I vote for embedding artist PayPal addresses in mp3s.

      A wonderful idea, until the first person discovers that that particular block of text can be edited.

    • I vote for embedding artist PayPal addresses in mp3s. Then we can send the money directly to the artist.
      I'd imagine the RIAA wouldn't think too kindly of this idea ...

      I'm all for this one, or something like it. I don't have a problem paying for quality music. But I hate to think that the artists that I respect and appreciate so much are only getting a nickel or something out of my fifteen dollars. I want the artist to get at least fiddy per-cent.

      Let's cut the riaa out of the picture.

    • I'd imagine the RIAA wouldn't think too kindly of this idea - but it is kinda fun to think about :)

      Sure they would. This would be right up their sreeet once they had demand^H^H^H^H negotiated an 80% fee for the "management" of the PayPal accounts. After all, musicians just want to write songs and perform, not worry about all that "management" voodoo the RIAA so kindly does for them.

  • No effects YET but, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kunsan ( 189020 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:54AM (#7003289)
    If the RIAA wins a few decisions in a courtroom, I think it safe to say it will scare the crap out of quite a few folks. Thereby causing a decrease in the number of people sharing music.

    JP
    • Good, all the brain dead pop fans will drop away, leaving only those trading the good stuff the RIAA members don't sell.
    • But a lot of the filesharers aren't in the US. See recent /. article about Canada. And there are other countries as well. The faster internet connections get, the more transparent international downloading gets. Downloads from Canada are incredibly fast. So there will always be plenty of sharers.

    • Re:No effects YET but, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by TGK ( 262438 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:55AM (#7003936) Homepage Journal
      But that won't happen. The RIAA is -=not=- interested in a courtroom decision. Think about it, and chart the possible outcomes.

      1.) Defeat -- The RIAA knows that this is shakey ground. It's that way for two reasons. First, there is some indication that users may be able to pleed ignorance of what tracks are copywritten and which are for general distribution. Secondly, a judge is unlikely to award the RIAA the vast sums of money they sue for. When a person settles out of court that's one thing, but when a judge flat out tells you that your lawsuit is both insane and very unreasonable it has deeper consequences.

      2.) Victory -- The RIAA wins the trial. But wait, suddenly they've gone from being "defenders of their legal copyright" to the 2003 version of the woman who spilled coffee on her lap... taken to the Nth degree. Come on, what kind of reaction would you see when some 12 year old kid holding his puppy calls a news conference on the steps of the court house to announce that the RIAA has won a judgement against him for over a Billion dollars?

      3.) An out of court settlement. The RIAA gets the money, little Johney doesn't get to call his news conference, and the entire thing never appears in front of a judge. There's no appeals process and no danger of a legal decision shattering the buisness model.

      Someday someone's gonna take this to court. Someone with very little to loose. It'll be interesting to see how that plays out.

  • lets see them try and put everyone in jail (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrfibbi ( 695943 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:54AM (#7003293)
    It's always been a fact that the worst way to tackle piracy is by nabbing the end users. Remember that humerous article a while back about the major detaining facility in Death Valley for file sharers? The problem is that they let filesharing get so widespread that everyone and their mother now download music. They're going to have to be a bit more creative if they want to stop people from using P2P.

  • I have a hunch... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by RealityProphet ( 625675 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:54AM (#7003296)
    I have a hunch that this is because programs like Kazaa are devious. Even when you think you're not sharing anything, you are. So, there are probably many many people who think they are only downloading music, not sharing it, too. For instance, only the most clever will point their shared folder to an empty directory, so as not to share anything. But only the cleverest of the clever realize that your download directory is automatically shared, so that each and every file you download is shared, unless you move it out! Ooops! Combine that with Kazaa's infamous difficulty to actually close, and you've got plenty of unwitting file sharers out there.

  • really (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Boromir son of Faram ( 645464 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:55AM (#7003304) Homepage
    In other news, crack cocaine remains popular, despite War on Drugs. No healthier or more legal, of course...

    • Re:really (Score:3, Informative)

      by Minna Kirai ( 624281 )
      Actually, the US government recently reported (illegal) drug use to be down to it's lowest point of the past 20 years. The "drug war" feds have claimed full credit.

    • really really (Score:3, Funny)

      by Atario ( 673917 )
      In yet other news, 90% of people on the road right now are going five to ten MPH over the posted speed limit, despite a standing army of ticket-writing cops on patrol every minute of every day.

  • Well, well.. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:55AM (#7003311)
    neither will their crippled CD's have a negative effect on filesharing..
  • Is this their own fault really? How long have we known about mp3s? Instead of adapting and changing their biz model, they persecute the technology and its users. Big mistake!

    I am curious about certain biz laws, that prescribe that biz that is irresponsible with their intellectual property should be help accountable themselves. I know this is true for some cases, not sure why it would not apply here...

    Also, a fun thing to try is http://streamripper.sourceforge.net Last I heard, it was not illegal

  • From the story... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hype7 ( 239530 ) <u3295110@noSPam.anu.edu.au> on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:56AM (#7003325) Journal
    ... the RIAA's attempts to cut down on (music) file sharing are slow to show any effect, as much of the public still considers the activity to be useful and/or acceptable. P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign."


    You know what statistics would be interesting to see?

    How much CD sales have dropped off in the period since all these lawsuits started targeting RIAA customers.

    It's hit all the newspapers, even Senators are getting in on the act. I wonder if that's had an effect on the public.

    -- james

    • Sales figures (Score:3, Interesting)

      by reptilicus ( 605251 )

      From The Register [theregister.co.uk]

      Overall, CD sales did decline at the start of 2003. Compared to the first six months of 2002, retail unit shipments fell 9.8 percent to 245.2 million and revenue dropped 9.1 percent to a paltry $4.25 billion. Don't shed too many tears just yet though.

      Over the same period, CD single sales surged by 162.4 percent in units and 173.5 percent in revenue. This raises an interesting question.

      Most file traders go after songs one at a time. They pick and choose the tunes

  • Of course it's popular still... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by overbyj ( 696078 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:57AM (#7003335)
    because until the RIAA hunt down every single P2P filetrader, people are going to continue to do it. Certain drugs are illegal but people still sell and buy them because the government can't stop every single person. The RIAA has to realize that basically the only way to stop P2P is to pull the plug on the internet (which btw they might eventually try to do once they run out of other bright ideas!)

  • new p2p clients (Score:5, Interesting)

    by capoccia ( 312092 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:57AM (#7003343) Journal
    all that will happen is people will start to use more secure filesharing apps like EarthStation 5 [es5.com].

    Actually, ES5 has so many security features the setup can be overwhelming to the average joe. So I wrote up a journal spelling out the important stuff [slashdot.org].

  • College Mentality (Score:2, Insightful)

    by sn0wman3030 ( 618319 )
    Seriously, nothing short of the hand of God is going to stop those damn kids from swaping theirs shit online. It's like the whole "They can't arrest us all" theory that drives underage kids to drink on campus as well.

  • Well.. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jamesjw ( 213986 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @08:58AM (#7003351) Homepage

    What did they expect?

    I mean the RIAA has only the reach in the US it seems, its up to individual countries appointed authorities to persue foreign traders.

    The problem will come for the RIAA when the trading goes underground to private FTP servers and the like, it wasnt that long ago when it was the only way to find music online..

    Napster changed things, it was probably the most significant 'killer app' next to Yahoo when Yahoo first started as somebodys bookmark page and grew to something thats been copied over and over and over (And which Google has perfected *grin*) :)

    -- Jim.

  • Risk vs. benefit (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:02AM (#7003378)
    It's a simple money matter : if you d/l a lot of music, at $15, $20 or whatever a pop at the music store, even if you get sued, you settle with the RIAA and you're still winning.

    Besides, the chance of getting caught is minimal : there are dozens of millions of file swappers around the world and maybe 1000 at most get supoenaed, and even better, in the US only (for now anyway). I would think it's more risky to die crossing the street than getting caught sharing files by the RIAA.

    So, why on earth would people stop swapping ? the risk/benefit ratio is tiny indeed. Which means that the RIAA's tactic is not effective, which also means that the only thing they achieve are (1) ruining poor students, single-moms's daughters and causing anguish and misery to all of them for nothing, and (2) generate a lot of shitty press for themselves. Not that I complain about the latter of course ...
    • Yes actually, the if you calculate the probability of actually getting sued, multiplied by the average settlement, you are definately winning.

      35 million American adults (lets only include those of which are likely to get sued by the RIAA, the 12 year olds are getting their settlement paid for them by legitimate online downloading companies)

      So far the RIAA has sued at the most 5,000 people, but hell lets say 10,000.
      10,000/35,000,000 = 1/3500
      Then multiply that by the average settlement which is, lets sa

  • Litigation/legislation doesn't change anyone (Score:3, Insightful)

    by nenya ( 557317 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:02AM (#7003379) Homepage
    This is just another case of an existing power structure being threatened by new technological and social realities, and, being unwilling to evolve, reacting with force. This has never, ever worked, except in cases of actual armed revolution, when the governing forces actually have the upper hand. But trying to prevent social change through jailing/fining people has never been an effective deterrent. What are they going to do, throw 20% of the country in jail? I don't think so.
  • I just don't get it why its acceptable, to take something someone has created (musican) and wants to be paid for and give it away for free?.

    If musicians want to publish musical works they've created through the RIAA (via a record label) what gives people the right to give it away for free and deny the artists the little money they would have gotten. If you create something isn't it your right to decide what you do with it?

    I've seen bands I really like fade into nothing because they couldn't make a go of
    • I don't think that the mentality is "take what you can get for free" from everyone. However, to take your analogy between software and music a step further...

      With Linux, an individual can download it, install it, and see if he or she likes it. The same goes with Shareware programs that are widely available on the Web. With P2P, an individual can download music from an artist and see if he or she likes it before purchasing it.

      It's more of a "try before you buy" mentality, and many individuals hold to tha
    • If you create something isn't it your right to decide what you do with it?

      Here's a more interesting question; if you buy something, is it your right to decide what you do with it, or is that the right of the person from whom you bought it?

      William

  • I wish P2P file sharing of music died completely (Score:3, Interesting)

    by blueworm ( 425290 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:04AM (#7003403) Homepage
    If the sharing of music governed by copyrights held by RIAA members over P2P networks disappeared completely, CD sales would not increase dramatically, thus soundly defeating the RIAA's argument that music piracy is the leading cause of the decline of CD sales.
  • If the file is marked as copyrighted then delete it. Only share files when you cannot tell whether the material is released as free speech or released for profit.

    Of course, since almost no files are marked as copyrighted that leaves just about every file out there to choose from.
    • I'd like to see someone who'se sharing freely-distributed indy music -- like music thats freely distributed on the band's webpage such as is the case with Cruiserweight [cruiserweight.com] (after getting the band's ok) get hit by the RIAA.

      I mean, afterall they're "protecting the band's interest".

      I'd really like to see the backlash this would cause.
  • This belongs in the "Well duh Gomer, what the hell did you think would happen?" department.

  • A very good point from the article... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by pirhana ( 577758 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:10AM (#7003446)
    >"Law, technology and ethics are not in sync right now,"

    This one sentence sums it up well. Despite the massive propoganda , people are not convinced by RIAA arguments and they dont find anything wrong in sharing things they possess. These file sharers are not "crminals" as RIAA says. They are just normal human beings who are not convinced by RIAA arguments, period.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by radish ( 98371 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:10AM (#7003454) Homepage

    Reports indicate crime still occuring despite existence of Police and Judicial system...film at 11.

    Really, I'm against the RIAA action as much as anyone else (and likewise the DMCA), but experience shows us that making something illegal rarely prevents it from occuring.
  • What we're trying to drive for is an environment in which legitimate online music can flourish

    But wait...wouldn't this involve actually releasing a online music service, or did they somehow find a way around that step?

  • I hope the Canadian RIAA learns from this (Score:4, Informative)

    by GreenCrackBaby ( 203293 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:13AM (#7003480) Homepage
    Despite previous stories about this, file sharing (the kind RIAA cares about) isn't legal in Canada, however the RIAA equilvalent in Canada is on record as saying "we'll resort to a public PR campaign and just see what happens in the US first before considering lawsuits." This information should be enough to convince them that court action isn't going to stop anything, and the backlash from the media that has happened in the US certainly isn't helping them.

    Of course, this is assuming that reasonable and rational people work for organizations like that, which is probably a bad assumption.
  • I mean, come on, you know they probably download music... We just need a RIAA letter sent to them. :P

  • Arr.... (Score:2, Funny)

    by pulse2600 ( 625694 )
    don't they know that nobody tells a pirate what do to!!! Especially when it be talk like a pirate day!!! Arr...
  • Kazaa (or any P2P) is not just a US bassed network. I am a canadian,a nd they are not trying to sue any of us up here (tho atleast not yet). And say If you download stough that RIAA has no control over, such as UK hard house and such (my style) why would RIAA scare Bs tactict scare me. Basiclay RIAA may scare some people to be a little more carfule what they downlod (IE avoiding the RIAA stough, to be honest I am not a brintney spares fan aeway).

  • How to fight them (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Gnaythan1 ( 214245 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:18AM (#7003534)
    Delay. Delay. Delay. Demand a trial by jury, Delay. demand a hearing in your home town. Delay. pay your lawyer to nitpick. Delay. Mount the costs as high as you can... and if they ever get a settlement, fight it too, and if that ever succeeds, declare bankruptcy.

    IF everyone they sue does this, the RIAA will run up horrendous bills trying to get blood from a turnip. their problems only increase, the more people they sue.

    Set up a fund for people willing to do this. I'd contribute fifty bucks to it. the price of two cds in exchange for killing the RIAA... Hell yes.

    If someone wealthy publicly offered to help back individuals being sued, that would stop this crap in a hurry.

  • It's like they're trying to hand the RIAA a clue (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mblase ( 200735 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:22AM (#7003566)
    The persistent lack of guilt over online copying suggests that the record industry's antipiracy campaign, billed as a last-ditch effort to reverse a protracted sales slump, is only the beginning of the difficult process of persuading large numbers of people to buy music again.

    I had the feeling that sentence was explicitly intended to be dripping with sarcasm. I could see the subtext as if it were in bright blinking neon: "The record industry would be much more effective at persuading people to buy music if they didn't feel like they were constantly being taken advantage of at the register."

  • Threat versus Advertising (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Marcus Brody ( 320463 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:23AM (#7003575) Homepage
    OK, so maybe a minority of people are put off by the (highly unlikely) chances that the RIAA may sue them. However, the feeling I have had through this whole P2P versus RIAA ordeal is that the RIAA are actually helping P2P.

    I mean, everyone knew about Napster. After that closed down, Kazaa, Gnutella, WinMX, etc were *real* quiet for some time. And then the RIAA starting hamming it up again, turning up the notch. And Joe Public was informed (via the RIAA and news agencies) that free music was back on.

    If they had put up and shut up, the re-growth of P2P would have been much slower, confined largely to geeks who had the impetus to go out and find Napster replacements. However, Joe Public has to be told about it from somewhere. And it was the RIAA who told them.

  • Ignorance (Score:2, Insightful)

    by wzinc ( 612701 )
    Even with the polls, I'll bet many Kaaza users don't read /. or any news site for that matter. Some may have school and full-time jobs and never watch the news. They may have never heard anything about lawsuits. That girl in New York thought she was fine by paying the Kaaza Pro fee or whatever. Where did she get that idea? Now, they'll make Kaaza put a warning on their pro version if it doesn't have one already. Even people that hear about it may ignore it or think it doesn't apply to them. What I'm trying

  • RIAA is HELPING file sharing (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Valar ( 167606 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:24AM (#7003594)
    The way I see it, the RIAA is helping file sharing. Firstly, they're giving it the best press money can buy. A lot of filesharing networks are noticing spikes in usage due to all of these RIAA press releases. The idea of thousands of 'criminals' distributing 'stolen' music for free just sounds too good for a lot of people for them to pass it up because of the miniscule chance they might be sued.
    Secondly, they are pushing the software along. More measures are being taken to produce software that can not only handle the increased usage, but also can ensure the privacy of the users.
    The only way I see for the RIAA to combat this is for record stores to have kiosks where you can burn a CD with songs you pick and chose, print out an attractive label and liner notes, for an affordable price. They may be too afraid of the new technology and the (temporary) profit losses to act however...
    • Unfortunately, the RIAA would likely never let this happen. Nor would the bands.

      Red Hot Chilipeppers (and some others) have voiced concerns that consumers shouldn't be allowed to pick and choose which songs they purchase. They want us to sit through 9+ horrific tracks so we can listen to the single good song that gets radio airplay.

      And RHCP should rightly be concerned. The last good album they put out was "Mother's Milk". Don't get me wrong, I love RHCP just their new stuff is crap.

      I would *really* liket

  • Going out on a limb: (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Thedalek ( 473015 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:27AM (#7003616)
    Perhaps the P2P networks are still flourishing at least in part because they aren't exclusively US based (where this sort of thing is actually being worried about by lawmakers and lawsuit-tastic companies).

    Sure, there may be concerns elsewhere in the world, but RIAA only has any power at all in the US, and there isn't another country on the planet in which litigation is a legitimate business model. Here in the states, it seems to be the new Vegas: Sue McDonalds for hot coffee, win millions. Sue retail stores for wet floors, win millions. Heck, they even advertise it on TV: Were you injured in the workplace? Do you suffer from mesothelioma as a result of exposure to hazardous conditions?

    Honestly, how hard would it be to set up a subscription-based content database with unlimited access? Considering how little artists get from record sales, and how you're completely eliminating manufacturing and distribution, even $0.50 per song is a bit pricy, but I'd probably pay it for music I liked (of which there is dreadfully little past 1989, but then, I'm livin' in the past).

    Of course, for me the real issue isn't that the music I want is easier to download than buy: It's just that I already have all the music I want. No, really. I don't want any more. I don't see anything that I enjoy coming down the pipeline, and I'm satisfied with what I have. What little I might be interested in getting is out of print or just plain tough to find new, like some of Steve Taylor's [sockheaven.org] early stuff, or just about anything by Hokus Pick. Besides, that stuff's not really being shared on P2P.
    • This is brilliant stuff. All those poor corporations sued for nothing more than knowingly exposing their employees to carcinogens and not giving their employees protective gear - or even telling them they are at risk - because it might chop into their profits. My heart bleeds.

      And as for McDonald's, read the actual details sometime. McD's was serving their coffee 20 degrees hotter than everyone else, even though that meant third degree burns in 3 seconds as opposed to 20 seconds. The victim was hospita

  • Like Prohibition (Score:4, Funny)

    by chia_monkey ( 593501 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:36AM (#7003705) Journal
    Yeah...people are cutting down on music filesharing. Sure. Just like people stopped drinking during Prohibition. Riiiight. People just don't do it as blatantly and openly as they used to.
  • Stop giving the RIAA an excuse to whine to Congress for more mandatory DRM and laws against filesharing, jeez.

    Boycott the RIAA and buy only 2nd hand CDs or independent artists. Look for free music. Don't go filesharing. Starve the RIAA until they drop dead in bankruptcy court.

    (What am I saying? They'll just get a multibillion dollar bailout on the taxpayer dime!)

  • p2p proponents are kicking themselves in the foot (Score:3, Interesting)

    by rjnagle ( 122374 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:40AM (#7003737) Homepage
    For me, the problem is not one of technology but of taste. When a p2p sharer launches a tirade against the music industry, and then uses p2p to find tracks by bands from the major labels, I fault this sharer not for illegality but unoriginality of taste. It is like buying a nice expensive $10,000 plasma wide-screen HDTV and using it to watch "Porky's 2" or episodes of Gilligan's Island. If the future involves people using anonymous freenet to swap mp3's by RIAA artists, doesn't this mean that the RIAA has still won?

    I wrote an essay about this at www.sharethemusicday.com [sharethemusicday.com]

  • And ? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tmark ( 230091 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @09:59AM (#7003994)
    P2P filesharing activity has decreased very little since they began their end-user legal campaign.

    Given that all evidence was that P2P had been increasing nearly exponentially previously, and given that the quote above implies that activity has decreased at least a little, this result shows that the RIAA's actions have probably had a very great effect on P2P activity. But I guess the spin sounds better to state almost exactly the opposite conclusion.

    And even if the RIAA's legal actions DIDN'T affect P2P activity, so what ? Would it mean anything if severely increasing the penalty for (to argue from the extreme) murdering your wife and kids failed to decrease the incidence of such crimes ?

  • Pity the RIAA (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ajs ( 35943 ) <ajs@ajs . c om> on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:02AM (#7004041) Homepage Journal
    I really do feel bad for the RIAA members (not the RIAA itself). They are stuck having to eventually face the fact that they are 80% of the way to extinction. Can anyone realy imagine a future 50 years down the road where anyone is interested in buying a piece of plastic with music on it?

    Yes, storing it in a way that does not rot too fast or get deleted for video game space is valuable, but I see the future retailers of music being the clubs that host musicians. They should strike a deal with the performers that they host to sell the music via a Web site and via a kiosk at the show.

    Here's one business model for that:

    Club makes USB-fobs that contain the customer's name, credit info (or a key that they look up the credit info in their database with) and email address. The customer goes to a show and likes it, so they walk over to the kiosk and plug in their fob to order the "album" on the way out. The kiosk notes the purchase in the database and sends email to the customer with a link to download the music from the Web site.

    Quick, easy, and here's the best part: you don't care about file-swappers because you get the customer at the exact point where they decide they like the music. You don't care if the 5 billion people who never come to your club swap this music around. What you care about is that your club (and the artist who gets a cut) made some extra money from a customer. You win, they win and the band wins.

    But, I still feel bad for the labels who are doomed because they can't make a "star" anymore out of some semi-talented performer who they can stick on MTV. Or more to the point, they can make the star, but there's soon going to be no point in terms of selling CDs.

  • Prohibition didn't work (Score:5, Interesting)

    by HangingChad ( 677530 ) on Friday September 19, 2003 @10:09AM (#7004138) Homepage
    And neither will any attempts to stop file trading. Even if you could make the penalties draconian enough to make people stop in this country, it'll still be going on in the rest of the world where many get a kind of perverse delight in thumbing their nose at US interests. Even though the music business is hardly a US enterprise, the way Congress bends over for them it's hard not to see it that way sometimes. RIAA might as well be trying to control the tides. Besides, the music industry is so hypocritical the way they treat their artists who feels any sympathy for them?

    Tn the meantime they will succeed in breeding a smarter generation of file traders. Wireless AP's, encryption, private music rings...only the naive will get caught. Pathetic. Makes you wonder how stupidity seems to get such a grip on corporate entities. Talk to them individually and they're pretty smart, but group up and the collective intelligence takes a nose dive.

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