Spotted on: Wired
This fantastic editorial by Tony Long is a powerful and accurate assessment of the fallout of the lawsuit against Jammie Thomas.? His analysis is so good that I have little to add.
Peep it for yourself.
Good show, Tony!
Monthly Archive for October, 2007
Inspired by: The Seminal
Having seen this post a couple days ago, I feel compelled to put my two bits into the future of albums. It is true that Prince gave his album away in a newspaper, and that Radiohead is breaking new ground with their latest album (for those of you living in a cave, you can choose how much you want to pay for the album).
Animosity toward major record companies is growing faster than US citizens contempt for their government (I’ll refrain from linking out to anything here). The entertainment industry is entering what is known as a paradigm shift. It’s a blessing that international acts who have sold tens of millions of albums are bucking the existing system, and thus speeding up its downfall. Once the major labels are gone (or reduced to distribution entities), a new paradigm for the music industry will emerge.
I’m going to speculate on two different future paradigms for the entertainment industry.
In the bleak future, there are almost no major studios, and there are only one or two companies making high end studio gear. In this future, albums are considered such a small part of an artist’s career that the effort and attention paid to them diminishes. A professional musician becomes someone who tours and sells merch exclusively, while the number of live venues and outlets for performance shrink exponentially (Have you heard what is happening in orchestras?). As internet streams and access to media continues to increase, the value of going to a live show also drops. In this future, there is zero market for music as a commodity. Almost all musicians become hobbyists, and only artists with marketing budgets to swamp the internet garner popularity. Most musicians will no longer believe that they can live their dreams, and less and less of us will be willing to take the risks that it takes to generate rampant success. In this future, acts like Metallica and Radiohead will continue to make money – their touring and merch machines can support a massive infrastructure.
While this future is depressing, it is not the future we are living into culturally. Major acts are taking actions now that will ensure that the market for music opens up, and are creating an environment where any artist can create success with dedication and commitment. In fact, going back to Radiohead (check out the comments on this article), fans are embracing the opportunity to support an artist, and are buying the album.
Depending on how you look at things now, you can say that albums sales are bottoming out, or you can say that the imbalance of major label influence is being removed from the sales figures.
The future we are actually living into (in my humble opinion) is one where albums sell, and fans want to buy music they love. Most of the animosity toward buying music has to do with pricing structures and that major labels take most of the money. Even though people can download anything they want for free, albums are still selling. While the value of albums may drop, the percentage going to artists will increase, balancing out the pot for artists (the only party that fans care about anyways). A billion downloads is not a coincidence. A la carte downloads are novel now, but just like a six pack is far cheaper than buying one can of soda, the value of buying an album will follow the same path.
We can look at the actions of multi-platinum artists as a litmus test for the music industry, but they do not represent most artists. Gauging the future of album sales on artists who have sold millions of albums is no different that gauging the future of album sales on major label methodology. The typical mid level artist has neither the resources nor the clout to write off the value of albums.
There will be a shift in the perceived value of music by fans, too. Once DRM goes away, and people stop trying to litigate file sharing away, audiences will begin to give up their resentment of buying music. With software, file sharing is also rampant. Yet software companies are selling enough units to stay in business.
People value things more when they buy them. A hard drive filled with downloaded music
will never go away (and is there any of us who have no mix tapes or downloaded songs?
While the current environment of corporate pressure raises hackles, audiences want great albums to listen to. We just don’t want to be told we’re criminals.
The future of music lies in respecting the choice of the audience. If people don’t want to buy an artists music, but they want to listen to it, more power to them. As long as they enjoy it. If people love music, they will buy it.
On a final note, we of the Polyvibe are putting our music out on p2p networks. Feel free to enjoy it. If you like what you hear, support the artists.
*The opinions expressed above are my own, and are intended to provide a perspective outside of mainstream music industry types. We are committed to creating a conversation about what is possible for the future of music outside of mainstream perspectives.
Syndicated from: RandyGarcia.com
Folks, this has gone too far! $222,000 for 24 songs? Please read this article:
By David Kravets | October 04, 2007
(Repost from WIRED Magazine)
*****
By David Kravets | October 04, 2007
(Repost from WIRED Magazine)
DULUTH, Minnesota — Jammie Thomas, a single mother of two, was found liable Thursday for copyright infringement in the nation’s first file-sharing case to go before a jury.
Twelve jurors here said the Minnesota woman must pay $9,250 for each of 24 shared songs that were the subject of the lawsuit, amounting to $222,000 in penalties.
They could have dinged her for up to $3.6 million in damages, or awarded as little as $18,000. She was found liable for infringing songs from bands such as Journey, Green Day, Aerosmith and others.
After the verdict was read, Thomas and her attorney left the courthouse without comment. The jurors also declined to talk to reporters.
The verdict, coming after two days of testimony and about five hours of deliberations, was a mixed victory for the RIAA, which has brought more than 20,000 lawsuits in the last four years as part of its zero-tolerance policy against pirating. The outcome is likely to embolden the RIAA, which began targeting individuals in lawsuits after concluding the legal system could not keep pace with the ever growing number of file-sharing sites and services.
“This is what can happen if you don’t settle,” RIAA attorney Richard Gabriel told reporters outside the courthouse. “I think we have sent a message we are willing to go to trial.”
Still, it’s unlikely the RIAA’s courtroom victory will translate into a financial windfall or stop piracy, which the industry claims costs it billions in lost sales. Despite the thousands of lawsuits — the majority of them settling while others have been dismissed or are pending — the RIAA’s litigation war on internet piracy has neither dented illegal, peer-to-peer file sharing or put much fear in the hearts of music swappers.
According to BigChampagne, an online measuring service, the number of peer-to-peer users unlawfully trading goods has nearly tripled since 2003, when the RIAA began legal onslaught targeting individuals.
At the time, BigChampagne says, there were about 3.8 million file sharers trading over the internet at a given moment. Now, the group has measured a record 9 million users trading at the same time. Roughly 70 percent of trading involves digital music, according to BigChampagne.
The case, however, did set legal precedents favoring the industry.
In proving liability, the industry did not have to demonstrate that the defendant’s computer had a file-sharing program installed at the time that they inspected her hard drive. And the RIAA did not have to show that the defendant was at the keyboard when RIAA investigators accessed Thomas’ share folder.
Also, the judge in the case ruled that jurors may find copyright infringement liability against somebody solely for sharing files on the internet. The RIAA did not have to prove that others downloaded the files. That was a big bone of contention that U.S. District Judge Michael Davis settled in favor of the industry.
Thomas, 30, maintained that she was not the Kazaa user “Tereastarr,” whose files were detected by RIAA’s investigators. Her attorney speculated to jurors that she could have been the victim of a spoof, cracker, zombie, drone and other attacks.
The jury found her liable after receiving evidence her internet protocol address and cable modem identifier were used to share some 1,700 files. The hard drive linked to Kazaa on Feb. 21, 2005 — the evening in question — did not become evidence in the case.
According to testimony, Thomas replaced her hard drive weeks after RIAA investigators accessed her share file and discovered 1,702 files. The industry sued on just 24 of those files.
(Courtroom sketch: Wired News/ Cate Whittemore)
*****
Ok, now lets be honest. Songs have always been “free” on the radio. This is because you are forced to listen to advertisements which undoubtedly sway a percentage of the captive audience to go buy the products represented in said advertising.
The idea that downloading hurts CD sales has been disproven. In Fact, there have even been several cases where a song breaks on the internet and causes a landslide of physical sales. Shitty music is hurting physical sales. Ask anyone on the street, Mr. RIAA. What we are witnessing here is a truly EVIL organization that is not operating in the best interests of the people it was designed to protect.
Let’s go back to this quote: “This is what can happen if you don’t settle.” That is a direct threat from the RIAA, telling us to conform to their standard, or else be disciplined by their heavily funded hand. I have a response for you, Mr. RIAA Lawyer Prick…
…This is what happens when you don’t Settle:
The revolution, the birth of a free nation, the creation of epic works of art, the birth of new technologies and the absolute free and unfettered exchange of information.
RIAA, your #1 client base is who you are attacking. Everyone is watching you, and thinks you are stupid. You will NEVER stop the free trading of music on the internet. You do not control the flow of information, nor are you operating in the best interests of those you claim to represent
Black markets flourish when consumer demands arent met by governments or corporations (look at prostitution or the war on drugs). We will always share music! We used to do it with cassette tapes, we used to do it with burned CD’s, We will do it by singing at each other if we have to.
This is for everyone:
STEAL MY MUSIC.
SHARE IT.
ENJOY IT.
After all, I wrote it for you.
-r
Spotted on: Ars Technica
The RIAA finally got their first case in court over people who serve MP3s on file sharing platforms. So all bland arguments aside, here’s the bottom line.:
The new argument is that if we rip or download songs we already own, we’re stealing.
Let’s cut through all the fancy arguments and cogent dissections and get right to the nitty gritty of it all.
Major media companies complain people aren’t buying music (as if over 500 million album slaes is some kind of small number), so they try to force us to buy music by restricting our access to it. The general public (that’s us) then gets indignant that we are being limited in our ability to enjoy music, and we download everything we can. The major labels then raise the prices of CDs, and add malware to their products (with some benign name so we don’t make the connection that a rootkit is a kind of virus).
We are told that when we buy music online, it will include some form of control, so that we can only enjoy it on proprietary software or hardware (think about how cellphone companies have 400 different adaptors to their chargers). Now they want us to believe we have no right to backup our data.
Now they are finally in court with us for downloading and sharing content, and they accuse us of stealing from them if we rip music we already own. There are now record players that will turn your albums into MP3s as you play them. I own lots of vinyl, and some of it is hard or impossible to find, even as an MP3. Am I criminal if I want to preserve my record collection? Most of these albums can only be obtained second hand at this point, anyways.
Where does it stop? At what point will they sue for the right to audit every harddrive on the planet, or require us to carry some sort of permit to listen to the music we have? Are we all to be fined for singing Happy Birthday?
Let’s look at it another way. People still pay for HBO. People still buy CDs, and digital downloads are a robust market (just not robust enough to support the behemoth of major record labels). It’s possible that if people weren’t forced to buy music, and told that everything we did with our music was a crime, we would be more inclined to buy more. What would happen if everyone stopped using DRM, and file sharing was accepted as part of society? What if intellectual property wasn’t treated like another flavor of soda?
If major labels want to revive their fiscal bottom lines, perhaps they could invest in developing talent, instead of suing us into buying music. Perhaps the answer to selling music lies inside of the music itself (this might explain why artists like Jimi Hendrix and Pink Floyd never stop connecting with younger generations).
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