Record Industry Loses Bid To Shutdown Grokster

**clocker** · 04-30-2003, 12:07 PM

Very interesting article, OTD...well written and a good read.
But I think there's a flaw in your logic.
After some searching ( damn! this attic is a mess&#33 I dug up some LPs and nowhere on the cover does it say that they are guaranteed to last forever ( much less survive improper storage) or that they will be available for sale indefinately.
If you substitute car for record maybe my point becomes clearer.
If, after 30 years, your Chevy BelAir becomes undrivable do you then have the right to appropriate a new Chevy ( and since the BelAir is no longer manufactured, let's make it a Corvette this time round&#33

?
Does buying anything once give you the right to expect free access to it's successors forever?

Don't get me wrong, this is not meant as a chastisement.
I just think you should have raised your Jolly Roger sooner and enabled the sharing option, as well.
You are noncommittal about whether you currently share (and in today's uncertain climate that is not unreasonable) but I don't think your reasoning supports not sharing.

That said, I did enjoy the article- good luck selling it!

**OlderThanDirt** · 04-30-2003, 12:18 PM

I agree with you Clocker ... but, CDs aren't meant to last forever, either. Nothing does. That was specifically WHY the Audio Home Recording Act of 1982 was enacted. It was meant to give people the right to "back up" their property and/or "space-shift" it. But, it established this property as only having to be paid for once. Here's the real hoot, though. The R.I.A.A. helped draft the law.

BTW, following my statement regarding "raising the Jolly Roger to the top of the flagpole," the word sharing (or my opinion on it) appears nowhere in the article ... hehe ... for a reason. But, I'll keep that reason to myself for now.

**clocker** · 04-30-2003, 12:29 PM

Originally posted by OlderThanDirt@30 April 2003 - 06:18
Here's the real hoot, though. The R.I.A.A. helped draft the law.

I'm guessing that the law will soon be revised. They certainly couldn't have anticipated the digital revolution, which made the word forever applicable to media creations.

It's good to have secrets, eh?

**OlderThanDirt** · 04-30-2003, 12:48 PM

FWIW, here's another niggly I have with the recording industry. Their ripoff of the consumer is not limited to their illegal MAP policies -- leading to the FTC investigation and multi-state lawsuit. They've been ripping off the consumer for much longer than that ... but doing it in a way that was probably not fully realized until the advent of P2P file-sharing. When my son and I went through my old albums, I did not add the names of every song on every album to the list of songs I wanted to reclaim ... nor did I add the names of every "B-side" song on my 45s. It wasn't until my son and I went through this list-making process that I realized what the ripoff was ... and the real reason why the R.I.A.A. is scared shitless about P2P file-sharing.

In a phrase, the album concept of marketing. The industry has been getting away with selling 1 or 2 hit songs alongside 12 or 13 "fluff/filler" songs on the same album since the 1950s. And, they want to continue making people pay for a whole CD to get those 1 or 2 songs they like. P2P file-sharing, on the other hand, is a direct challenge to this album concept (a song-by-song concept) ... and exposes the ripoff for what it is. If you went to a grocery store to buy an apple ... but the grocer said, "Well, I can't sell you the apple unless you also buy 14 lemons at the same time," you'd think the grocer was insane. But, that same insanity has been going on the music biz for years.

Unfortunately for the R.I.A.A., their track record at killing file-sharing services has been pretty bad lately. They won the first few battles but now seem to be losing the war. Still, their big complaint is that CD sales have slacked off because of P2P sharing. Maybe they have. But, I don't think it's all due to outright theft. I think a large part of the lull in CD sales is due to the fact that more and more people are unwilling to be ripped off anymore by the album concept. Hits, yes ... duds, no. The industry may have to do a lot of rethinking if they want to survive in a world that's been spoiled (grin) by the "song concept" realization of the masses.

**clocker** · 04-30-2003, 02:14 PM

So are you likely to use the Apple "legal download" music service?

*see topic "Legal Music" in Musicworld*

**OlderThanDirt** · 04-30-2003, 09:48 PM

I'm likely to check it out and possibly "try" it ... like I did with Rhapsody. But, I suspect it won't be my cup of tea. Services like these play to the "top-this-and-that" crowd. Most of the music I like is 20-40 years old and some it never made the "top-anything" charts. In a word, obscure music.

True story on Rhapsody. At the time I tried it out, I was having an email discussion with Brad King (a columnist at Wired.com). Unknown to me at the time, Brad was in a bowling league and one of his bowling partners was a Rhapsody exec. Anyhoo, Brad had done an article on Rhapsody ... and at the time, they had 2 tiers of service. The cheap tier allowed people unlimited "listening" to their music library. The not-so-cheap tier allowed downloading of 10 songs per day and the "right" to burn them on a CD. I told Brad I was about to experiment with Rhapsody and would send him and Rhapsody the results of my experiment. Here are the particulars.

I own a utility called TotalRecorder which can be downloaded from HighCriteria.com at this link -- http://HighCriteria.com. The registered version only costs $11.95. Basically, TotalRecorder will capture anything passing through a sound card as a WAV file ... which can be saved and later converted to anything else (including MP3). I signed up for Rhapsody's "listen-only" tier and, with TotalRecorder on, listened to (and captured) a few songs, converting them to MP3s. Then, I sent email to Brad, cc'd to Rhapsody, telling them my ONLY purpose in becoming a member was to experiment with their so-called "secure" listening protocol. I put these MP3s up on my webspace and gave them links to the files (for their info/testing). And, I told them all about TotalRecorder and "how I did it." Within a week of this email, Brad told me of his conversation with the Rhapsody guru ... who expressed "surprise" at my ability to snag these CD-quality songs.

Certainly, this doesn't mean I'm some kind of guru. But it does mean that the people who started Rhapsody were clueless as to the cheap software out there that could turn their "secure listen only" service into an MP3 bonanza (snicker). And, a few weeks after this incident, Rhapsody "revised" their service tiers. Now, the cheap tier only allows listening to pre-programmed "online radio stations." Still, their higher tier might be a bit naive ... unlimited listening but charging 99 cents to download/burn a song. I'm not certain whether they've dealt with the "capture" issue yet. I quit Rhapsody once my experiment was complete. But, I didn't quit them because their service was bad. I quit them because their playlist doesn't include the obscure music I'd want to listen to. I have no interest in Madonna, Metallica, Boyz 2 Men, etc., etc., etc. But, that's the market niche these new "legit" services are marketing to.

**OlderThanDirt** · 05-04-2003, 06:21 AM

I've been reading articles about the new Apple "iTunes" service ... which is still not available for PC users. According to one reviewer, the new AAC (MPEG4) files sound quite bad on QuickTime. Being a PC user, I can't say whether that assessment is true. And, whether or not a PC player might render them better is an unknown at this time. One thing is certain, though ... at this point anyway (things may change). iTunes has less than half the tunes available via the PressPlay service. And, running through their list of groups left me wanting for a whole lot more. As I suspected, PressPlay doesn't cater to my age-group (50+). And, if PressPlay doesn't, a service with less than half the available tunes is probably even more restrictive. I guess I won't try them out after all.

But ... back to the topic at hand ... RIAA's attempt to shut down file-sharing (and services). I just saw a news snippet on my local station. Their latest move? Sending "instant messages" to offenders to "educate" them to their illegal activities. But, these messages are sent to people allowing uploads, not people downloading music. This new phenomenon of scare tactics against small-fry users and lawsuits against the major uploaders/downloaders may backfire, though ... driving users to services employing security measures. While it may be easy to track down IP numbers of users using FastTrack software, the same may not be true of a service that's been around for a long time -- Filetopia (www.filetopia.org) a service co-located in Spain and Germany. Software included in more recent versions "mask" an IP. The downside? It causes transfers to be slower. But, if privacy becomes paramount, users may flock to such services.

**Switeck** · 05-10-2003, 06:11 PM

I still think the music industry's BIGGEST ripoff is what it's done to the music artists.
P2P filesharing is a FLEABITE by comparison!

What if the car industry only paid the auto workers AFTER the autos were sold and ONLY a 'small percentage of the profits'? I think we can envision auto workers unions taking up pitchforks and torches. Or even a bit of Luddite-like behavior.

Was that $400 million in overcharges on CDs according to US Court/s?

But the music industry have been ripping off music artists for over 100 YEARS!
And NOW they claim the MAIN reason they're against music piracy is because it hurts the artists...

Oh boy, they're even KNOWINGLY lying about the causes of CD sales drops!
From 1999 to 2001, they started pulling CD singles and Cassette singles from the music store shelves -- and no longer making any more. Previously, this represented over 20% of their sales! They had fewer new artists/titles come out in the last 3 years as in the 3 years before. There's been a 'minor' economic downturn as well. AND they've been slowly (or not-so-slowly...) increasing the price of CD's greater than the rate of inflation -- and CD's were overpriced to begin with! They're also starting to use CD copyprotection schemes to FURTHER reduce the value of CDs to consumers and the added COSTS of this 'artist protection scheme' comes out of the artists' royalties (either directly or indirectly)! They've even attacked various scientists (Edward Felton and others) for pointing out serious flaws in their digital music/sound encryption design/s... They've asked for and GOTTEN copyright extensions to the point that anything copyrighted almost has a permanent copyright. The whole CONCEPT of PUBLIC DOMAIN has be demolished -- ideas and creations are being locked away until they are destroyed by time itself, never to be seen by the next few generations... unless sales can be assured. They've borrowed the EULA's (End-User's Liscencing Agreements) from companies like Microsoft to FURTHER restrict fair use, (ever read the fine print on the front+inside of music CDs nowdays?) through laws such as the DMCA (Digital Millinium Copyright Act) and others which seek to TOTALLY BAN _ANY_ device capable of making unauthorized [digital] copies of copyrighted material... and they're seeking to 'plug the analog hole' too!

It's almost like they've taken the Bill of Rights to a paper shredder -- and they're not through trampling OUR rights yet!

Yet they still have rather incredible amounts of music sales -- so much so that they can AFFORD these expensive [il-]legal endevours and ad campaigns and still pay their artists something. (Well the Canadian tax on blank CDs and cassettes has not seen any money go to the artists yet, but hey... they at least claim to be giving back to the artists there through the tax of blank media sales.)

Their losses due to p2p file sharing in short is a FARCE, because it's not so much a loss as a 'less profit than anticipated'. They neither claim these losses on tax statements nor to their shareholders -- or the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) would give them the Enron treatment... (which unfortunately amounts to a slap on the wrist.)

And p2p music filesharing is destroying sales somehow?
We're not even throwing their 'tea' into the harbor like some of the US's 'founding fathers' might!
We're only illegally smuggling 'tea' like some of our OTHER 'founding fathers' did.