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I hate the music industry
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Because it is lobbying my government - my representatives in this country - to repeal my freedoms. And what's more, it's succeeding. Corrupt government? Not in the literal sense, but in the moral sense - yes.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7258437.stm
Now, whilst to some this may seem fine, it is not and has never been your ISPs job to monitor what you do.
Can you imagine all your phonecalls being listening into by BT / NTL / phone provider in case you say you are doing something dodgy?
Yes, in criminal situations i.e. bomb threads, murder / rape I think it's justified. But this is a civil situation, where one party (music vendors / producers) want to monitor other people (us) in case we infringe their copyrights. It's completely wrong.
I may as well get the government to put an order out to tell all the phone companies to listen to conversations for anyone who libels against me.
Same thing, no?
It's just shocking - a precedent is being set - that an individual (or collaboration of individuals) is being given such powers (indirectly through compelling ISPs to do their dirty work for them) over other individuals. Maybe I'm being hysterical but I don't see why the music industry or ISPs have any right to know what I'm doing online, anymore than I have a right to know what they're doing online.
For all we know, the RIAA CEO is distributing this music through p2p.
For the record, I don't download music cos I don't listen to music - but why should a private person / collection of people not voted in or sanctioned by the government be able to lobby the government to put forward measures for their sole benefit.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7258437.stm
Now, whilst to some this may seem fine, it is not and has never been your ISPs job to monitor what you do.
Can you imagine all your phonecalls being listening into by BT / NTL / phone provider in case you say you are doing something dodgy?
Yes, in criminal situations i.e. bomb threads, murder / rape I think it's justified. But this is a civil situation, where one party (music vendors / producers) want to monitor other people (us) in case we infringe their copyrights. It's completely wrong.
I may as well get the government to put an order out to tell all the phone companies to listen to conversations for anyone who libels against me.
Same thing, no?
It's just shocking - a precedent is being set - that an individual (or collaboration of individuals) is being given such powers (indirectly through compelling ISPs to do their dirty work for them) over other individuals. Maybe I'm being hysterical but I don't see why the music industry or ISPs have any right to know what I'm doing online, anymore than I have a right to know what they're doing online.
For all we know, the RIAA CEO is distributing this music through p2p.
For the record, I don't download music cos I don't listen to music - but why should a private person / collection of people not voted in or sanctioned by the government be able to lobby the government to put forward measures for their sole benefit.
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Comments
ETA: totally agree with the OP, not the post above.
a whole area of your brain dedicated to music must be shrivelink away!
you are completely correct. if the recording indistry fucked off and the laws they exploit were repealed the way music would be delivered would be totally different.
Well I do obviously but don't go out 'to' listen to music, I just listen to it when it's on...
Well they basically missed the boat and got utterly shit on by the pirates. The pirates delivered it faster, cheaper and for less work than the record companies. In short, they knew the market better than the record companies. Records (and tapes, and CDs to a lesser extent) cost a lot of money because of the amount of work and specialised equipment involved in making them, shipping them, etc (45% of the costs are retail ffs). Now everyone has the equipment to reproduce the music themselves, and yet the record companies still want to charge the same amount for an album as they always have done. If an album is a reasonable price, then I doubt that most people will be arsed to trawl through Limewire to get the tracks they want. But if you're going to save £8 by doing it, and end up with a product that doesn't come with all of these ridiculous limitations on, which prevent certain MP3 players from playing them, then you're not going to open an account with iTunes, are you?
The Radiohead experiment ended up with something like 40% of people opting to pay for the album (of course, certain people downloaded it to listen and then paid something later). However, if they actually set the price at about £3 or £4, I doubt many people would be going onto file sharing sites to try and find a free version. At that price, it's just not worth the hassle. If you offer something for free, then don't be surprised if plenty of people don't pay. You just can't compete with free when all other things are equal. But if you offer something at a price that people think is reasonable, then I suspect that the vast majority of people will be willing to pay for it, just to avoid the inconvenience and risk associated with downloading illegally.
Exactly. And besides--"owning" music is something that seems wrong to me. How can you "own" music, or ideas, or anything intangible like that? Doesn't make sense to me. I don't mind supporting an artist I like by buying their music, but I don't think that the music belongs to them because they created it, or me because I bought it. And it's the record companies that really "own" the music, not even the musicians! It doesn't seem right.
To put this in perspective - if ISPs start policing our web usage, we'll have some of the most restrictive internet access in the world. In China it's not monitored, they just filter out websites the government doesn't like, but it's easy enough to get round them.
There's no other country in the world where any kind of service monitoring occurs for the benefit of one organisation etc.
:yes: I agree.
You probably can
I'm dubious about the idea of doing away with intellectual property in general, as far as actual recordings of music goes. But as usual, the record industry goes too far. If they could, they'd probably try and charge you for each individual person who listens to the CD. I went to watch my cousin's school play this week. They did Grease, but the weren't allowed to sing You're The One That I Want, because they would've been legally required to pay over a grand in royalties. That's just for playing and singing music written by someone else. In a fucking school play ffs.
They've already been resisting changed to the law and have made a statement saying it's not their role to police the internet - they just simply hook people into it. It would be massive more expense for them - and of course they would lose custom by pissing off customers.
However, the government keep going on about it recently - they've got an agenda whether it's public or not, and are just going to explore the different avenues.
Thing is, I can listen to music on the radio, and it's still entirely possible for me to just plug my PC into a radio or internet radio station and just rip the music off it that way. Piracy has always been something that wasn't difficult - and people who want to will find ways easily enough. Even if this comes in, you'll still be able to get around it - you can encrypt your data use so it looks like you're sending holiday photos to granddad. It becomes a matter where the ISP has to start taking your traffic, looking at it, and decrypting it - and it soon becomes such a big task it's not worth it for them.
But the people who will be inconvenienced is the average joe. Maybe they want to listen to a new song their friend has, so their friend sends it to them over MSN / yahoo chat or whatever. Then the next day a letter comes from their ISP saying that they've been illegally filesharing and will have their internet use suspended for 60 days or something daft.
The hardcore people who want to get away with it will and do, the casual internet browser will get stung. And with the RIAA at least in America managing to convince the courts each 'stolen' song is worth £4,000 to them, they may as well - empowered by ISPs monitoring our internet usage - just start sending out fixed penalty notices, like the government. (which will go into their pockets)
For anyone concerned about stifling creativity, the vast majority of sales revenue goes to the music producer / label / thing rather than any artist. It will go into a shareholders pocket. The music industry is run like a ruthless business where they don't give a damn about creativity - that's why they support 'safe' musicians who have an obvious mass appeal rather than more eclectic but inspired talent. They just want to make money - after all if they don't their shareholders will sack the management or worse, sell their shares off. I guess you could call it one of the downfalls of capitalism.
And the counter to the power of this massively powerful industry should be the government. Even in America, Florida state has been whipping them a little bit for being arses - but our government seems to be cuddled up to them and not even giving thought for the average joe they should represent.
The issue is the music industry is large and powerful, lots of money in it, big names, conglomerates, MNE etc.
Although some porn 'labels' are semi-big nothing is anywhere near as big as the music industry. And then add to that organisations like the RIAA that band together loads of the big labels, they can become as powerful as a government (which is scary).
Recently we've seen that they can field the best lawyers in their field against individuals, suing for huge sums because the technical ability of the legal team the average joe can afford is just nowhere near that what you get when you pay millions, unfortunately.
Music is not a commodity that is given away for free. It may well be in the future, but it isn't now. Only 1 in 20 of all music downloads on the Internet is legal and paid for. That means there's countless pirate copies doing the rounds, usually uploaded by deluded people who say they're "sharing" the music they "love" with their "friends". Don't make me laugh - most of the files I've come across have been downloaded thousands of times. You're really trying to say you've got 5000 friends? You're really saying that the person who made the track has given you permission to distribute it for free to anyone who comes along? On your bike!
ShyBoy may well complain to high heaven about what the music industry wants to do, but would you care to suggest an alternative? What is the music industry supposed to do when its own livelihood is under threat? We need record labels in this world, big and small. Why do you think that most producers are now launching their own record labels? Most producers are simply not professional enough to market and distribute their own music. That is why record labels are absolutely essential in music. But they need money to survive and they're being deprived of it by thieves.
And don't come out with the old chestnut of "oh, it's all about the majors wanting to make even more money" or that other one "yeah, but music is too expensive anyway". What, at 79p a download? What a ridicilous joke. I'm all for this idea, frankly.
79p a download is £8 an album. That's the same price as a CD, for half the quality and none of the versatility. And with no production, shipping and retail costs, only an idiot can't see that they're ripping you off charging the same price for both. I'm not justifying downloading it for free, but I'm not going to feel sorry for the music industry because they got shafted by their own lack of foresight and unwillingness to engage with new technology (not for the first time). Pirates are always going to be there. The only way to beat them is to destroy their market, and that means doing the same thing as them cheaper, higher quality and more conveniently (with downloads, the first bit is difficult, though not impossible, but the second is where they would have the edge if they had half a clue). At the moment, the pirates not only offer it for free (albiet inconveniently), but also offer a far superior product (based on the measure that I can actually listen to it on my MP3 player, which I can't with downloads from iTunes and Napster). That's how you tackle piracy, not by checking everyone's computer.
I'll give you a case in point. One of the largest distrubution companies in dance music until recently was called Amato. When they folded, they owed sums of money to several small record labels. One of those was the Liverpool-based 3Beat label. They were owed £75k by Amato - a small sum, you'd think, but absolutely vital to an independent. They couldn't absorb this cost, so most of the company has now gone into administration. They had to do a deal with Universal Records in order to keep the record label business going. They had no choice - it was either that, or the whole business went into administration.
This may not sound terribly relevant to you, but it's a story that's becoming more and more common in the music industry, and it worries me greatly. I completely agree that making downloads as easily available as possible is the answer. But mass piracy on this level can't be tolerated. It has to be dealt with. To give you your credit, you are at least trying to come up with alternatives, which is more than most complaining about this are.
Independent record companies have always gone under. I don't think you can blame that exclusively on pirates. They failed because they followed the failed business model of the larger companies and didn't have the capital to survive it.
The mass piracy has been caused by the music industry though, so it shouldn't be up to the internet industry to sort out the mess for them. The thing that worries me is that the film and TV industries seem to be going the same way. Thankfully, there are a few legitimate websites starting up offering free TV in exchange for advertising space. Now that's how it should be done. Match the pirates on price, and beat them on convenience and quality.
All absolutely miniscule even compared to a company like Play.com, never mind the cost of running a nationwide network of music stores. I'm not exactly an expert on the logistics of it, but it wouldn't surprise me if you could run the entire operation for a whole country out of a single office.