The RIAA propoganda machine is in full swing...

http://www.riaa.com/newsitem.php?id=780E8751-0E03-4258-D651-F991B66E1708

I love their phrase "Pre-lawsuit letters". Otherwise known as "Bully boy", "We don't have enough evidence" or "Please soil yourselves and payup" letters.

The RIAA and it's henchmen need to wake up and get with the times, file sharing is not the problem, the problem is the recording industries refusal to adjust its business model meet the needs of today's hyper-distribution technologies which like it or not are here to stay and will only become more and more efficient over time.

No longer can the industry offer people physical media over electronic media at frankly over inflated price when the "illegal" methods are more efficient, better organised, more cost effective and generally reflect the needs of the market place.

There is a well known bit torrent music tracker that has an index of more than 200000 albums and can tell you the exact technical specifications of each and everyone of them (bit rates, encoders used ect..), most people I know that use the site would pay for the privilege to access this vast and organised library if there was a legal alternative - which there is not, and no - sorry but iTunes does not cut it, 128Kbps is not good enough given the prices charged

I am a producer, artist and advocate of legal filesharing.

I believe wholeheartedly in free music (some of the time), I was pretty happy when I saw a few of my first tracks on soulseek, I hadn't shared them but either way promotion is promotion, whilst im not intending to make a living out of it I understand other peoples frustrations at stuff like this if they are trying to make a living out of it.

But ISP's should not give data to anyone other than the police and then it should have the relevant warrants, id be highly pissed off if my ISP decided to give my details over to some record company on a whim that I was sharing files illegally!

The Belgian ISP Scarlet has recently been forced to install a filter in order to stop p2p trading of copyrighted works by the local "artist representatives" body.

So, is this European ruling good news for the ISP (and its users)?

“The music industry is transforming how it does business and embracing digital distribution models of every kind,”

roflao.... sure..... uh huh..... yup..... I believe you......

and scene.

it's ok - most p2p platforms support encryption - so the "filter" wont actually know that the traffic is p2p related and therefore will nto be filtered

The RIAA has been a pain in the backside for the private individual even in the days of Vinyl records. Back then they patented a filter for the pick-up head and required license fees to be paid from the various turntable manufacturers.

What was the complexity of the filter? Nothing it was a simple band pass filter that anyone in electronics would have seen and used.

If you wanted to listen to your own records you had to pay, through your turntable's manufacturer's license agreement, the RIAA.

Back then, it was a once off payment, you weren't even aware of it as it was built into the price of you turntable, and you could play as many records as you wanted.

Not a lot different from Dolby etc...

All they've done since those days is find more ways to increase their revenue. But who benefits from the RIAA? Certainly not the consumer!

we all just admitted that we're not willing to pay for music. It's a simple message that the consumer needs to embrace. Write letters, post messages go on the radio and advocate what we are all thinking. That music should not be a professional service instead it should be like You Tube where people with day jobs provide all of our content.

I'm not a big fan of this plan (I'm a greedy producer) but I think it's about time the consumers brought their real intentions to the table. Then perhaps would could make some meaningful changes.

The RIAA has a mandate to protect its clients through any barely legal means necessary. Change the laws and they'll stop harassing us. But until the audience ends this vague 'Oh I'll pay for music when it's fairly priced, not going to greedy blood suckers... blah blah' nothing will ever change.

Just admit it. You don't want to pay for music. When that happens me and my evil ilk will simply sell the business to advertisers.

@Will Leamon: "Just admit it. You don't want to pay for music."

Sorry Will, I am happy to pay for music. I am not happy to pay €20+ for a piece of plastic when only €2 gets to the people who make the music. I am not happy to pay €1.99 a track for music I can only play on a limited number of devices when again, only 10 or 20 cents gets back to the people who made the music.

Distributors should be creating multiple versions of their cataloged works and selling them at different price points to try to approximate perfect price discrimination.

Instead of charging $30 for a VHS movie, $30 for a DVD Movie and $30 for HDDVD/BlueRay, it should be more like $5, $15, $30, and likewise extended to downloadable versions of differing quality... $3@1080P, $2@720P, $1@480P, all the way down to $0@240P.

There's no marginal cost for keeping multiple versions "in stock" for online delivery.

If they don't get their acts together, the only solution left will be to break up the distribution monopolies.

"But until the audience ends this vague 'Oh I'll pay for music when it's fairly priced, not going to greedy blood suckers... blah blah' nothing will ever change."

OK, I'll make it explicit.....

I'll pay for music when I can buy tracks at a MAXIMUM price of 80p per track, a MINIMUM bit-rate of 192kBps and ABSOLUTELY NO DRM!

The main crunch is the DRM that prevents me from using the music I have bought as I wish (burn to CD, play in car, play in mp3 player, play in phone). Until the "greedy bloodsuckers" get over their obsession with DRM and copy prevention filesharing will ALWAYS be a more attractive alternative.

People WILL pay a premium to be legal, but not while the music and movie industries continue to take the piss out of their customers.

@Will Leamon

>Just admit it. You don't want to pay for music. When that happens me and my evil ilk will simply sell the business to advertisers.

Yeah. I love that. so many people are hypocrits.

For myself, yes, you're almost right. I don't want to pay for music tracks.

>until the audience ends this vague 'Oh I'll pay for music when it's fairly priced, not going to greedy blood suckers... blah blah'

Oh, but you're also wrong: I'm ok to pay for music once it's fairly priced. It's only that the fair price is actually 0. The track costs nothing, I would pay up to twice nothing to have it.

Not because I don't want to spend money, but because twice the cost is enough.

But of course, if the track itself costs nothing, the initial investment in producing the album is not free, so I'll gladly pay for that, via a tax or whatever other schemes enables everyone to get all the music they want.

What if not greed is the behaviour of majors? it's indeed a question of being a greedy blood sucker. Not our blood, the artists'. Between getting $2 billions (or whatever) a year in a UK-sized country by selling the obsolete medium CDs are, and getting say $2 billions a year via a tax, what is the difference?

For consumers, it means that for the same price, that is around $40 a year, what people spend on albums, they have access to as much music as they want instead of buying just 2CDs (and obviously many small businesses would rush to provide jackets and physical CDs for a few dollars apiece once the music itself was freed, for those who still would want the physical object). So it's a huge gain.

For the music industry, it's getting $2 billions without any distribution cost or intermediates (yes, Virgin Megastore would not be happy but then, if they're useless as intermediates, why weep on them), versus getting the same money with at least half going away in various costs. So it's also a BIG win for the industry.

It's normal: new technology (costless perfect-quality duplication) allows huge gains that can be shared between consumers and producers.

Why do the majors reject such a model while the industry could probably make at least twice as much money while making people happier? Well, because it's the industry as a whole that'd be making the money, not necessarily the majors. And they might well become completely useless once you don't need a distribution network anymore.

Artist might self-produce, just get an agent to deal with renting studios, contracting advertisement business to attract people to their new release, maybe a lending business specialized in investment in artists and so on. As opposed to the everything-included-but-your-hands-are-tied-and-I-get-most-of-your-money packages the major can currently enforce because of their vertical integration and oligopoly status).

Then there would be a real risk that the instead of having a pie size 100, 50 wasted in useless costs, 40 for majors, 10 for artists, you'd have a pie size 100, with 80% going to artists and 20% for the remaining role of the majors.

So though the industry has a lot to gain from freeing the music (provided a levy compensates the artists), the majors themselves, who are in charge currently, have everything to lose.

So yes, greedy bloodsuckers indeed, who price music unfairly.

Let me pay my $40 a year to a state- or independant- rights distribution agency, let me reward the artists better that way, and let me get 500 albums a year for the price of 2 currently.

I want to pay a redistributing body for the right to listen all the music I want, I don't want to pay the majors for individual music tracks.

..for the percieved problems of the record industry of which I rarely hear: from the Beatles on we had a rare period of high creativity (Focus, Led Zeppelin etc.) which is now over. Lots of new groups just try to be different. It is technically easier and yet easier to make a recording and in consequence more and more junk is generated. Go to a record shop and look round: two thirds of the offer date of that old creative era and they still sell (as opposed to the latest fashion, the greatest part of which will not last a year).

What if this was the cause of the falling revenues of the record industry, not the filesharing?

As a hypothetical test: would they be willing to allow the sharing of all that is more than 10 years old if they could double the price of the rest?

@Will Leamon: "Just admit it. You don't want to pay for music."

Total Bollocks! I took the £50-£100 a month I used to pay for CD's, and stopped lining the pockets of an industry that claimed I was killing it when I was actually supporting it.

The second somebody like Apple brings DRM free 256kbps albums for the same price I used to pay for my plastic disks (£8-£12) I will start investing that cash back in. Unfortunately, the DRM free crap is still a long way from the price we should be paying, so it stays in my pockets for now.

Oh, I also stopped buying DVD's the second they forced me to watch a 10 minute presentation on the evils of piracy that was unskippable... seriously, wtf?! So if somebody downloads a DVD rip they don't have to sit through this crap EVERYTIME they want to watch the DVD... interesting... so guess what I do now. ;)

I love me films - so I still go cinema and watch the same stupid advert, but at least I have friends and other fans to Boo with me at the screen in protest!

A simple "Thanks for paying to watch our film, we appreciate it. Please let others know watching in the cinema is better" notice that flashes up for a few seconds would be cool.... but no, we have 10 minutes of either

"you wouldn't kill a child would you? No! So why would you buy a DVD from the mafia who funds his killing spree's with your dvd money?! And even worse - its bad quality too"

OR

"Downloading is illegal, the cinema rocks... it's amazing *cue annoying audience screaming at a roaring lion from recent film*... but on a pirate video the the video quality is crap, and sound tinny, and your view is spoilt from the guy who had to go to the loo in front...."

thats usually the time when some huge guy sits in front of me and blocks my view, or the kid behind starts kicking my seat... or.... *takes deep breath* - well, needless to say, I don't like the ad's.

ok - rant over.... sorry! :)

Out of the few artists that were seen as classic's such as Beatles, Led Zeppelin etc - how many countless artists just churned out bad music??

I would have to say that actually, creativity levels are about the same, it's just that the industry seems to be marketing the drivel more than the good stuff.

I'm pretty sure that many people at the time of the beatles/elvis/LZ would have said "wtf is this crap - bring back <insert random wartime-singer> - those were the good old days".

History repeats itself, we just see history through rose-tinted specs!

I am a happy user of Napster; I pay my £15 a month. I download as much music as I want. Some months I might not see anything I fancy, some months I might have 20 albums.

I'd like to be able to burn tracks to CD, but it's not essential, I'd rather a company built a car stereo, I could plug in and download tracks to.

As my 3 kids get older and want mp3 players of their own then the device limit may be a pain, hopefully they'll introduce a family plan.

For DVD's I use lovefilm.com, again £15 notes a month to rent as many DVD’s as I can get through, limited only by the post.

I'd love to download movies or TV on a subscription basis; I'd happily pay for the convenience, of a one-stop shop where I can download digital media.

What the record and movie industries should realise is that if they make it easily available at a reasonable cost then there will be little piracy as most people want to be law abiding. It's their intransigence and continual blocking the way that leading to more people being involved in piracy.

A legal version of bittorrent with all the TV, movie and music content for a reasonable monthly fee (I’m big on the subscription model) is the way forward.

"....only €2 gets to the people who make the music"

Do you know any musicians who get €2 ???? I don't, and I know some pretty famous musicians.

Most of them are lucky to get €0.20 in the contract and very few of those see the €0.20 after the record companies deduct their "costs".

Staying on topic.... the reason I don't buy the RIAAs music is because it's all mass produced crap which has been post-processed to remove all dynamics in an effort to make it sound loud on car radios.

That, plus the fact most of the CDs coming off the presses are of the "one-decent-track-plus-a-bunch-of-filler" variety.

Nope, sorry RIAA. If you're seeing losses it's not because of piracy. It's because people have rumbled your game and are spending money on other things (eg. DVDs, whose sales keep doubling year over year despite being just as easy to download - explain that!)

The comments so far sum up the situation well for me.

CD quality is crap, the only CD's I have bought in the last 8 years have been at concerts directly from the bands. If I really like a band I'll buy vinyl.

Strange how CD's from the early 90's where almost indestructible while now merely cleaning the things will send them to hell, that's if the new disk has been made properly to begin with. So the first thing I do is rip them to .ogg so the original disk wont suffer. Then the folder gets moved to my Audio directory, take a guess what other software reads from the audio directory....

The music industry as a whole is crap, there will never be another Beatles or Led Zep because a hundred Brittneys and Robbies makes a lot more money, hence no more TVs out of hotel windows and Rolls Royce in swimming pools :(

Quite a few bands endorse file sharing, if it wasn't for p2p no one would have heard of them. (Punish Yourself is one of the top of the head but there are plenty more). Hopefully as connections get faster there will be more mixes or compilations to be found as p2p has expanded my listening at least 10x, the radio wasn't going to do that (John Peel, may you rest in peace) when its mostly owned by an industry that wants us paying to dollar for mass produced crap.

As for DRM, what a load of crap. I can see it and I can hear it but there is no way I can record it ? Here is a rolling doughnut, guess what you can do with it.

BTW, on linux you can skip the "Video pirates eat dead babies" part As far as I know there is a version of mplayer compiled for win32, it could be worth trying.

Cheers

Don't buy *any* music. Don't listen to Internet radio (the netcasters pay a royalty to the labels). Don't go to live concerts. Make exceptions *ONLY* for musicians who sell their works directly to the consumer.

One year of the loss of, say, 60% of gross revenues, and the RIAA will be out of business. Then we can discuss a fair distribution of the purchase price of music - with at least 80% of it going to the artists.

...Weapons online... Targeting... Target acquired... Open fire!

Mr Leamon, I, and most other consumers, are in fact quite willing to support artists. The fact that you think we don't is part of the "consumers are criminals" mentality you and your ilk espouse. For my part, I'd be more than happy to pay, even a dollar a song, except that:

1) I do not tolerate being treated as a criminal when I am not.

2) I do not tolerate your efforts to take control of MY computer. DRM is exactly that; you are trying to control what I can do with the data on my machine.

3) I do not tolerate the further use of DRM to create "pay-per-listen" type schemes where I can only listen to a song a few times before having to pay for it again and again.

4) I do not tolerate the further use of DRM to limit the number of copies I can make. If I burn a CD to use in the car, and it melts on a hot day, I want to be able to burn another. If my machine dies or I have to upgrade, I want to copy my music collection to the new machine and still be able to play it.

5) I do not tolerate being forced to watch copyright propaganda every time I want to see a a movie. When I press a button on my remote, the machine does what I want it to, NOT what YOU want it to.

6) I do not tolerate your pressuring our democratic governments into passing obscene copyright laws allowing you and your kind to milk money for over a century from a few weeks' work by an artist and production team.

7) I do not tolerate the oppressive and brutal measures you and your kind take to enforce your obscene copyright laws.

8) I do not tolerate the lies and propaganda you and your kind spread about filesharing being linked to terrorism, about how filesharing is the same as stealing, about how you support the artists when you don't even pay them dick from the billions you make, and about how many billions you are losing when your profits are going through the roof.

So WHEN you stop portraying ordinary people as criminals, WHEN you stop trying to control everybody's computers, WHEN you stop greedily seeking ways of milking more money from us by imposing artificial constraints, WHEN you stop destroying our freedom by perverting democracy, WHEN you stop persecuting filesharers, WHEN you stop your endless lying and propaganda, THEN I will pay a fair price for music.

Until then, I and most of the rest of the world will stand against you and fight this war for ever if need be. You will not win. In 30 years of copy protection not one DRM scheme has ever escaped being cracked, and it only needs one person to crack it and upload the file and your scheme is useless. We outnumber you millions to one and for every scheme you come up with we have an absolute counter. Is that clear?