RIAA Writes Its Own News For Local TV 282
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "Did your local news recently do a two-minute clip on music copyright infringement? If so, you can thank the RIAA. They sent out a video press release to local news stations as part of their 'holiday anti-piracy campaign.' In it, they warn people that the best way to avoid counterfeit music is to avoid 'compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan' and to trust their ears, because illegally copied music usually sounds 'atrocious.' Instead, they encourage watchers to buy ringtones for Christmas."
you mean like Mothership? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:you mean like Mothership? (Score:5, Funny)
Disparity (Score:5, Insightful)
So what are they saying here? They know exactly what their fans "dream" about and they aren't selling that? Why not? What possible sense could it make to refrain from selling their target audience the products for which there is maximal demand?
Pirated music sounds atrocious? If so why is it so popular?
They're saying "if it's good it must be pirate!" (Score:5, Insightful)
Buyers should be looking for the bad, expensive CDs with only one good track on them. That's the only way to ensure an officially sanctioned product.
Re:They're saying "if it's good it must be pirate! (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, and that's true. Once again this Christmas I'll be looking forward to the compilation CDs the kids make most of all. At least they put some personal time and thought into it instead of just going and buying some crap, and I know it won't be laden with malware.
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Re:They're saying "if it's good it must be pirate! (Score:5, Funny)
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Obviously, I must not be a music fan, then. Everything I listen to voluntarily sounds pretty darned good :)
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And sometimes they just want to sell box sets.
Re:Disparity (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Disparity (Score:5, Funny)
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"You get what you pay for"
"Watch for compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan"
So... um... a wicked compilation that's cheap... or a sucky CD that's expensive... You know, I thought "You get what you pay for" meant something different, but I'm glad to know I can stop overpaying for stuff now.
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Because the part that makes this a dream only is the reasonable price.
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Gah. (Score:5, Funny)
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(and I think some of us here can do that)
Re:Gah. (Score:5, Funny)
"I never understood why you would *buy* a friggin ringtone. Most phones these days have usb plugs built in, or an transflash slot. A little sound editing and some technical jiggery-pokery later, and you have WHATEVER THE HELL YOU WANT as a ringtone."
I have no doubt that all of your friends are not only capable of the technical jiggery and the pokery, it's actually your hobby. You just love you some technical jiggery, particularly when it's with a side of pokery.
Next time you're at Walgreens, look at five people (your friends don't count, assuming you pulled your friends away from their jiggery and/or pokery sessions to get them to come with you to Walgreens). Any five people. The middle-aged cashier. The jailbait playing with the lipstick. The creepy guy in the photo section. These people just don't have the jiggery/pokery aptitude necessary to roll their own ringtones. Okay, maybe the creepy guy in the photo section does. But those other four people: they're the ones who are buying ringtones.
It's like that other question that boggles a lot of Slashdotters: why would anybody *buy* a friggen TiVo when with some spare computer parts, an IR blaster, a Linux distro and five troy ounces of jiggery/pokery, they could build their own? Sure, it smells like burned solder and you had to recompile the kernel a few times (the secret is "patch -pl -jiggery -pokery"), it doesn't have that cool lighting or the nice case or that bee-boop sound when you push the buttons, but you're STANDING UP to the MAN.
"Best thing in the world to get a phone call in a public area to have your phone shout, "My anus is bleeding...""
Interestingly enough, that's exactly what the creepy guy in the Walgreens photo section was shouting, too.
who needs RIAA music? (Score:5, Insightful)
is to listen to music made by independents who freely share their creations on the Internet often under Creative Commons, and reject any music made by people who are associated with big labels or the RIAA.
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So I should base my choice in music based solely off of how it's distributed?
No, you must take a more holistic view encompassing lots of variables... you should find all that matters to you about music, such as distribution, quality, lyrics, medium (CD, mp3, ogg, stream, etc), ... then decide how important each parameter is for you, and use all parameters in your evaluation, not just one. I maintain however that some parameters are worthy of much more consideration than currently enjoy by most people.
More specifically, people nowadays would even buy or listen to music created b
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Which you downloaded offa bittorrent...
THE WoW soundtrack doesn't count (Score:2)
Of course, I still listen to the K.I. soundtrack, so take it for what you will...
Assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, they really convinced me, I'm buying ringtones from now on, people.
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Re:Assholes (Score:5, Insightful)
So these customers have to turn to piracy to get what they want.
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Fuck RIAA (Score:2)
Fuck the RIAA (Score:2)
Of course! (Score:5, Funny)
compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan
Of course such things must be counterfeit. Everybody knows that the RIAA companies would never ever produce something that music fans would actually demand. 100% all good songs on an album, you've got to be kidding me!
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Any sufficiently advanced malice is indistinguishable from incompetence.
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You: O
/ \
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Interesting)
There are a few acts out there that can make interesting albums, but when it comes to Britney Spears and that ilk, they simply don't have the talent to do it, and the album really is a few hits surrounded by a bunch of garbage. Because the single was all but killed by the end of the 1980s, this is the only music distribution they have.
That is until the Internet, but because the record companies so thoroughly have fucked that up, they're now stuck with an overpriced format that's largely unlistenable junk, and have declared such a tremendous war on consumers that the obvious route of again going back in time to selling singles is a door they simply refuse to open.
They are unimaginative dinosaurs, a pack of accountants and lawyers (whatever happened to the old A&R guys and producers who actually had some independence). These guys don't understand music, to them an album should function like any economic widget, and they have so muddied the water with people who have no business even being in a studio that now people are increasingly unwilling to pay their artificially high CD prices and want the few actually good songs the industry really produces.
I think the most telling thing isn't the complaints of younger artists, but of older artists who have been in the business for decades now. Paul McCartney, who has probably made more money for EMI through the Beatles and his solo work, than most of these crap bands they have now, thinks that the company is old and staid.
Unfortunately governments, rather than recognizing that no amount of legislation can ever keep an out-moded business model alive, have been bought by RIAA and its various international act-alikes, and thus rather than politicians saying "Look, solve your own problem." are allowing the record industry to drive further down the road of absolute extinction.
Re:Of course! (Score:5, Insightful)
So, stop bitching (Score:5, Interesting)
Why doesn't the EFF release a press release occasionally, like this, mentioning the things being done by the [MP|RI]AA to inform the consumers about fair use, laws going into effect and how they will affect us, asking people to contact their reps, etc.?
Lets stop blocking and start punching a bit. Face it, we're geeks, are faces weren't exactly pretty to begin with, it's not like we have much to loose if we get hit there once or twice...
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There is of course another solution: Stop listening to music RIAA is associated with and instead only listen to music made by independents who freely share their work under Creative Commons and other licences on the net.
Why fight to listen to something that is of low quality anyway? Independents make better music because they love what they do! And if you want to thank them you can always offer them a donation.
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Re:So, stop bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
Hmm, you have flawed logic in there.
Why fight to listen to something that is of low quality anyway
Actually, there's some good groups in RIAA associated groups. Granted it's not as easy to find as it once was, but it exists.
Independents make better music because they love what they do!
Heh, I like to sing. I can guarantee you don't want to hear me sing. Liking, even loving to do something, doesn't mean you are good at it. So far, most of the independent music I've hear around here sucks horribly, and most even comes out worse than the bottom of the barrel in the RIAA crowd. The last set I went to was horrible. Only one group had potential, then the lead singer opened his mouth and started spewing the most retarded lyrics I have ever heard, with one of the worst singing (shouting?) voices I had ever heard.
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The first group sounded horrible (one of the people in it was great solo, but yuck), I described the middle group, and the third group was a mediocre chick with a mediocre group. Maybe 1 in ten of the indie groups I've seen have sounded worth listening to, let alone good.
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Re:So, stop bitching (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let them squeeze.
The more you tighten your grip, RIAA, the more customers will slip through your fingers.
Atrocious?? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Atrocious?? (Score:4, Funny)
There's a new trend which is even worse... (Score:3, Interesting)
I don't know what the bandwidth of a GSM phone call is but the latest RIAA offerings sound like somebody being strangled in the middle of a punk-rock nightclub. It takes you a few seconds to even figure out it's supposed to be music and not your phone dying.
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That old CD i bought a few years ago, which is now all scratched and plays badly must be pirated because it sounds atrocious...
While those FLAC files i downloaded from bittorrent must be legit because they don't sound atrocious.
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Sorry I really like my mp3s!
Why they're doing this: (Score:4, Interesting)
They really, badly need to get back to their core business. It's evolved a bit, but they still have a chance to figure it out before all their artists flip them the bird and go completely independent.
This is the Internet. You have one shot to become the middleman, before someone like Google or Amazon takes that role from you.
Re:Atrocious?? (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know about you, but there are few things more hellish and foul than a 30-second clip of a song encoded at 64kbps playing through a mobile phone speaker.
Maybe the loud, obnoxious, personal conversation that follows?Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is what we refer to as a "market failure." The Fair Use doctrine exists in part to address this, but this is an excellent example of why Fair Use doesn't go far enough. If you cannot get what you want at a fair price, the market has failed.
How has it failed? "Failed" implies an objective, and the market has no objective beyond the short-term advantage of individual players pitted against each other. It's rather like saying that evolution has "failed" if it doesn't produce a rabbit with cool claws and fangs, or whatever you would like it to produce. It's just short-term incremental adaptations with no final goal.
It is up to us to create a society which has an objective (which ought to be the greatest good), rather than pretend that our
Market Failure (Score:5, Insightful)
Ignoring the whole issue of fair use here...
To play devil's advocate for a moment... (Score:2)
To be fair, a number of collections *can* be put together illegally for sale (or legally not for sale once purchased in other ways) that simply cannot possibly be legally put together by any single record company. Let's say for example, you liked for whatever reason, a handful of tracks by Green Day and The Offspring. Your 'dream' in this case could be a compi
Ringtones? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ringtones? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Ringtones? (Score:5, Informative)
It is the kids accepting this shit that are the bunch of fuckin' morons.
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What? (Score:5, Insightful)
That explains (Score:5, Funny)
Re:That explains (Score:5, Funny)
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Gvie the people what they want (Score:5, Insightful)
avoid 'compilation CDs that could only exist in the dreams of a music fan'
Why aren't these compilations legally available?
If they recognize it is in the "dreams" of their customers, why not give the people what they want?
I used to DJ as a hobby and am proud to say my mixtapes were a big hit among friends. These compilations were fun to make, fun to listen to, and got people exposed to some music they otherwise would've missed or ignored.
The recording industry, the labels, the RIAA, even many of today's "artists" are completely out of touch with their fans and customers. It is stunning and sad.
Wow, I suggest watching the movie. . . (Score:5, Insightful)
Most of all I'm just sick of all the time the RIAA is wasting on this, I think it's quite inevitable that this propaganda won't do anything, I hope they know it too. VHS, cassette tapes. .
Sinatra? (Score:4, Interesting)
the dreams of a music fan [must... be... quashed] (Score:2)
cts's holiday guide to ripping off the riaaholes (Score:3, Informative)
2. load the shared folder with gigs of porn. small files (the point is: lots of files to mask your download)
3. start sharing the porn. wait for awhile, a few hours. this will stuff your upload queue
4. pick an album you want. for example for my gf, it was alisha keys "as i am". find the copy with the most sources. pay attention to the comments (denotes a good source or a bad source)
5. suck that sucker down by itself, your only download, high priority, as fast as possible. when done, immediately remove the album from your incoming file directory
the point here is that you are not being a "bad" file sharer (only taking, not giving). you are just segregating what you give/ take by your legal exposure
the point of all the porn is that it masks any requests for the file the riaa will go after you for. even when the file is half downloaded, people can start taking it from you, so you don't want an empty upload queu. you must mask and flood out any requests for the riaa loaded file while it is being downloaded with tons of harmless porn uploads that no one will go after you for sharing
that's about as safe as you can get sharing pop music files in the usa (if you are not technically astute)
happy holidays!
Re:cts's holiday guide to ripping off the riaahole (Score:2, Insightful)
Huh (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, all *my* illegally copied music sounds just fine.
And I'd sooner go back to wax cylinders and magnetic wires than give them another fucking penny, so find a different tree to bark up, RIAA.
Hey, I just noticed you can't spell "a pirate" without RIAA! Yeah, I'm kinda slow.
Pirated News Clip! (Score:4, Funny)
Um, I don't think this clip is legal guys...
Unbiased News Sources (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Unbiased News Sources (Score:5, Insightful)
That's actually really weird. (Score:2)
If by atrocious ... (Score:2)
This is normal (Score:4, Informative)
But Proctor and Gamble can afford it, as can Conagra, etc.
You want them all the time, if you bother watching local news, and don't even know it. Look for the atractive reporter that you've never seen before, or the reporter who reports on the same subject EVERY SINGLE TIME he or she is on a segment. That's a giveaway that it's outside material.
"Atrocious" (Score:2)
finally some honesty (Score:2)
Up until this point I believed that compilation CDs had some significant value, and I have even purchased some of them as they did contain my dream songs. I even recall television advertisements encouraging me to buy these wonderful compilations, often accompanied by dream type metaphors, in which I was told to send money to K-Tel in exchange for highly cov
Instead of Ring-tones this year (Score:3)
Then go out and support your local independent band.
in SOVIET RECORD COMPANY... (Score:2)
Seriously, did they hire some ex-KGB guys to work on stuff like this?
But you wouldn't... (Score:5, Funny)
Turnabout is fair play. (Score:2)
Why can't some public minded video types compile a consumer news clip with high production values that helps people avoid the perils of DRM by pointing them to unencrypted sources for their favorite content? Apparently the networks will run nearly anything they didn't have to pay production costs for.
A gootube dramatic series would be cool too. You could call it MediaQuest, with the stooge starting each episode buying content he hopes to enjoy (the "White Album?") but every episode ending with his money
Phew! I'm safe! (Score:3, Insightful)
Thank god! My dream compilation CD's all sound great, so they must not be illegal copies. Thank goodness for bad logic!
Nothing New or Unusual (Score:3, Informative)
Not just video... (Score:2)
I can just imagine the headlines (Score:2, Funny)
Tom - "Today old lady steals millions of dollars worth or records we will send you to john for the full report"
John - "Well Tim what looks to be an old lady is really a monster while she was cashing her pension she was behind a organized syndicate of file sharers stealing hundreds of songs from Snoop Dogg, Britney Spears, Slipknot and many others, back to you Tom"
Tom - "Well that's one old lady who will be spending the rest of her days in prison"
There's dangerous stuff out there (Score:2)
Yeah, the world is dangerous out there. You think you're buying a legitimate CD for $5 on a street corner out of a trunk, and what do you know, this is pirated music. Ouch, whoda thunk it! Fortunately the RIAA is here to tell us about the dangers of unintentionally buying pirated music.
And that's not all, they have more videos coming up, one with a guy baking a couple of bacon slices going "These are your ears. These are your ears on pirated music.". Really, what would become of us without the RIAA?
Faux news (Score:3, Interesting)
Sadly this is getting all too common. Energy companies pay PR firms to make feature spots panning ethanol production, ethanol producers countering with feature spots of their own, the Bush administration making fake news stories in support of No Child Left Behind and the Iraq war, the military does it, pharmaceuticals, Microsoft PR is quite active in print media and tech publications, the Men's Warehouse is famously behind the yearly "suits are back" media blitz every year...it's quite the trend in PR. No surprise RIAA would want to get in on the act. But, like everything else they do, they do it badly.
Perhaps if they laid off the cocaine the world might make more sense.
Heh, heh, heh (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't say.... (Score:2)
Well, consider this: the "dreams of music fans" up north of the border include the "compilation/best hits" album from Trooper, a quintessential Canadian band, that they (the band) put together, rerecorded as necessary, and put some new stuff together for.
The label (Universal) has been holding it up for
. Possibly more than a decade.
Now, it would be one thing if the label just didn't want to spend the money themselves to release the album
Flash (Score:2)
Why is it these people are always putting up videos in Flash format that requires people to Borg their browsers that make them vulnerable on so many web sites around the net? Please include a normal link to a normal video file.
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Any business that is not interested in free-marketing is not going to be in business very long.
--
Reddit [reddit.com] is the kiddie version of
Re:most news are intentional leaks or press releas (Score:2)