RIAA & MPAA = License To Hack Your Computer

Great Debates
21

I wonder what would happen if software authors like myself started including in their licensing terms that their shareware/freeware applications could not be legally used by any employee, owner, subcontractor, or designated agent of the RIAA and MPAA? I already legally exclude people that have been banned from my Board; I think I will add the RIAA and MPAA employees to the “Tier 2” license list.

There’s stealing, and then there’s stealing.

First off, early in the Napster debate, the RIAA posted statements and made statements to Congress which were knowingly lies. Such as one I personally heard on C-SPan, where the shill for the RIAA claimed that “MP3s are illegal. Plain, and simple.” This was a bald-faced lie to Congress, and I want to know how much money this man had to give to the DNC to avoid being held in contempt of Congress.

Second off, the RIAA tries to very unreasonably restrict copyright in ways which not only do not make sense but are a burden that is “asking for trouble.”

Case in point - I have several legally purchased 45-rpm and LP records that I cannot listen to anymore - because I have no turntable. I paid for these songs. But I can’t listen to them. So, I downloaded the songs to listen to them. AFAIAC, I have done nothing morally wrong here. And I’ll bet a lot of people would feel the same. Yet, the RIAA’s position on this is that yes, I have “stolen” the songs somehow.

But all I’ve done is change the media. Just like recording a legally purchased LP to cassette in your home. Why does the RIAA brand me a criminal for the above act?

Second case in point: I bought a CD about 3 years ago, legally purchased, that after I had it for a year developed a crack in it. Now, this was through no mistreatment of my own at all - I treat my CDs very well - one day, there was just a crack. So, knowing that it actually only costs pennies to manufacture (note I did not say “produce”) a CD, I tried to write in to get a replacement, at some reasonable price. Since it was defective.

Nope - in fact, the letter I got back was very rude, accusing me of trying to extort money from them. I was to throw my defective CD away, and buy a new one for about $17 at the time.

So I downloaded the songs instead.

Third Case: Having already bought legally a casette of Adam and the Ants, I wanted the CD. So I went to the store and legally purchased my CD (note I have paid twice for the same songs at this point). And after I get home, I discover that one track which was on the tape was not on the CD, even though the CD had more space than the cassette! In fact, the track is only available by…you guessed it, buying another $15 CD. That’s just bullshit, IMO, and I downloaded the track.

Fourth Case: Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk album. The only, I repeat, only song that’s really of hit value on it, on the CD version, is a freaking edited version - to fit on the CD so they could cram two albums on 1 CD! Yes, Sara is an edit, and it sucks. Having bought the cassette and LP, I now have the RIAA’s latest and greatest version, which is a edited song. So I downloaded the “full” version, available from another compilation CD. That’s right - want the “full” version of the most popular song on the album? Buy another CD, Jack.

And yet, in all of the above cases, I am the “evil criminal that wants to bring anarchy to the World and screw all copyright holders, everywhere.”

Bullshit. These are common-sense cases above, and while the actions may, I repeat, may be illegal, they are not immoral - they are not done with the intent to “screw” the copyright holders, or to deprive them of income. The RIAA needs to put on a human face and try to accomodate situations like the one above. The same sorts of situations above (which are REAL situations) have driven several to seek the MP3 route. The unwavering bull-headed uncompromising arrogance of the RIAA is their own undoing.

They are extremists with an extremist position, and they have shown no willingness to compromise. Unlike most, I actually remember the horror stories and scare tactics that came out of Hollywood when the big VCR debate was on - they said such grandiose statements as “By 2000, there will be NO movies made in the US!” Somehow, no one is calling them to task for that, I wonder why?

I guess you are too young to remember tape-swapping and trading circles and clubs, where you could freely copy thousands and thousands of tapes very easily. I knew I guy who had 6 VCRs set up in his house to dub three tapes at once for friends.

I never did that, because that was blatantly illegal. Unlike my 4 Cases above, which may be illegal, may not be, but certainly do not seem to be immoral to me.

This is hyperbole, and doesn’t help the debate. If by “decent net connection” you mean a $25,000/month T3 line, then maybe. If you remember that the vast majority of the US still connects via a 56k modem, then no.

22

Anthracite: All the scenarios you describe would almost certainly fall under the legal definition of ‘fair use’, and would therefore be totally legal.

But it’s this type of freedom the RIAA wants abolished.

23

Anthracite, I too have replaced LPs with downloaded music. I also replaced lost/stolen cassettes and CDs. Lastly, I’ve downloaded a few one-off songs. My personal opinion is that only the last should be illegal, but how do I go about proving that I already paid for fair use of my Boston albums? As for your VCR example, that was the beginning of the IP anarchy that reigns today. Regardless of who holds the rights and who was screwed out of what, it is a patently illegal behavior. Still, the videotape swappers numbers were inconsequential to the swapping of movies and music now.

I agree, the RIAA takes an extremist position. However, music and other intellectual property (software, movies) should not be free, and an entire generation is growing up believing otherwise. (Yes, it’s an exaggeration and hyperbole).

I haven’t yet heard a workable solution that protects intellectual property rights holders while respecting the right of fair use (against which the RIAA fought vigorously).

24

I’d gladly accept a tax of 5 cents per blank CD-R disc if it meant I could download music, movies, and TV shows legally.

And apart from the cost of a VCR/stereo and tapes, there’s no cost for recording movies and music off the air.

The only equipment you need to record hours of music off the air is a boom box ($20) and a few blank tapes ($5). Compare that to downloading music off the internet - you need a PC ($1000) and an internet connection ($20/month), plus the cost of a CD-R drive and blank media if you want to listen to it somewhere else.

Seriously, what’s the difference between downloading episodes of Sealab from Kazaa, and taping them off TV? Cartoon Network isn’t making one cent more if I wait a week to tape an episode with my VCR than if I download it today.

Same thing with taping songs off the radio. If I want a copy of a current top-40 hit (90% of the songs on Kazaa), I can hear it played on the radio at least once an hour. All I need to do is wait for the song to come on, and hit record. If I’m worried about the quality of analog tape, I can record directly to CD or DAT.

No one is making a cent more if I record the song from the radio than if I download it, so why is one wrong and the other is okay?

25

Neither one is OK. But one is very hard to stop.

26

There is a larger issue here. And that is, the current model of distribution of certain types of copywritten material no longer works, nor does it serve the interests of the content creators or the public at large.

Consider the record industry as a whole. It is a giant oligarchy of companies which control the distribution change of most music. In the old days, they served a valuable function. Recording studios are hellishly expensive, and it was expensive to advertise and produce albums. A record company therefore acted like a sort of hybrid between a book publisher and a movie studio. In the process, they managed to contractually lock down most of the avenues of distribution of the product. They’ve gone even further than that in trying to control music - now they are trying to manufacture artists like boy bands or the latest pyrotechnic female singer - who they can sign to long-term contracts and essentially own. The record business today is much like the old ‘contract’ system in the movie biz, where actors would be under contract to a movie studio for a long period of time.

But in the internet area, home studios can produce music of excellent quality. Mp3 allows it to be disseminated in digital form. Advertising through word of mouth on a large scale is now possible with the internet. As a result, the record companies are in danger of becoming extinct.

THIS is what they are afraid of. I believe the music copying angle is a bit of a smokescreen - what the record companies really want to do is completely shut down alternate methods of distributing music which they don’t control.

For an example of that, look at what just recently happened to Internet Radio. All they wanted was the same royalty structure that other radio stations get. And the record companies went berzerk at the thought.

27

I readily concede that the RIAA/MPAA are working hard to infringe our fair-use rights. CD’s with all sorts of zany restrictions (some won’t play on PC’s, others won’t play on Macs, etc).

I believe that fair-use boils down to: You purchase one copy of the work in question, but you have a right to transfer it to whatever media you choose, so long as it is strictly for personal use.

Back to the VCR for a moment. I don’t see how anyone can compare the pirating of videotapes to the downloading of movies. A PC and internet connection have many uses, a VCR has 2 (play and record), so a cost comparison of the base unit does not make sense.

To pirate a tape, you must have the source tape and a blank tape. Work is involved in performing the copy. More work is involved in getting the source tape.

To download a movie, you click on it. Once you have it, not only can you watch your l337ly pirated copy of ‘Goonies’, but it is now available for millions of people around the world to ‘share’ as well. You don’t need 6 VCR’s to ‘share’ 3 tapes with a PC, your only limit is your bandwidth.

Saying that VCR’s were somehow the equivilant of p2p networks is comparing apples and oranges. While yes, some pirating was done on VCR’s, the sheer volume of pirating on p2p networks makes any comparison between the two somewhat meaningless.

28

How do you explain the record collection in your public library? Anyone can just walk in, check out the music they want, and listen to it. So long as they don’t make copies of it or charge a fee for listening, that is legal.

How is that different than me using Kazaa to download the songs of a new band I heard of to see if I like them?

See, this is what bugs me - Kazaa has opened up a world of music to me. I love music, but I don’t like 99% of the stuff on the radio. So I never listen to the radio. As a result, I don’t buy CD’s. Or at least, I didn’t. People could say, “Hey, you’ve GOTTA get this record!” - so I do, and hate it. But now I’m out 20 bucks. So generally, I don’t take the risk.

With Kazaa, I can go music browsing. I have downloaded literally thousands of songs. I don’t own them. I’ve never purchased them. But I can do things like say, “Tonight I’m going to see what all the fuss is about group X”, or, “Tonight I’m going to download a wide range of classical pieces and see what I like”. It’s opened horizons for me.

If I find something I like, I’ll go out and buy the CD. As a result, I’ve bought more CD’s this year than probably any other year in the last 20. Kazaa has resulted in a whole bunch of sales to the record company.

In essence, Kazaa and its ilk are the musical equivalent of the web. You can browse. You can listen to obscure artists. You can follow ‘threads’ of musical styles. For example, on this board a few days ago, someone recommended Wilco. I downloaded their songs, and liked them. Went to Amazon, and read about them. Discovered that Wilco was formed by half of a band called, “Uncle Tupelo”. The other partner formed a band called “Son Volt”. So I downloaded their music and listened to it. Liked Son Volt a lot, but not so much Uncle Tupelo. But that led me into alt-country, which I would have NEVER listened to otherwise. I spent a great night widening my musical horizons, and the next day the record industry got three CD sales from me as I purchased the music I like.

I don’t know what the exact solution is to the piracy problem. I agree that intellectual property must be protected. I have a CD burner and could easily have burned those CD’s. But I bought them.

What I do know is that P2P music networks are an important innovation. They promise to bring music to the masses and give the consumer badly needed information. And ultimately, I believe the extra sales they generate for the record industry probably balance off the piracy.

In addition, as these services evolve, they will become an important distribution method for artists who do not want to be tied to a record label, or who can’t get a record contract. That’s also something too important to lose.

Incidentally, Wilco released their entire album for free on their web site, after Reprise records refused to sell it and released them from contract. That didn’t stop it from being their best-selling CD to date. Eminem’s new CD is setting sales records, despite the fact that his audience is exactly the kind of people that could download it for free if they wished.

29

The record collection at a public library works because records (…CDs, VHS tapes, DVDs…) are physical objects; if I check out the only copy of The Wall, no one else can listen to it until I bring it back. Similarly, if you buy a CD and sell it to a used record store, you can’t listen to the CD anymore.

Digital media is inherently different, because it’s only information. You can make a hex dump of your favorite song and print it on a T-shirt, effectively giving the song away to everyone who passes you on the street.

Since the industry has yet to demonstrate any losses from media sharing, I find it hard to sympathize with them. People haven’t stopped buying CDs or DVDs; so what if they’re also getting something for nothing? I get something for nothing every time I go to a friend’s house and he plays a CD he bought.

30

I’m curious. What chance does this have of passing? I have a feeling its low. Let’s hope so.

31

I have a feeling that it has a pretty good chance of passing. A lot of moneyed interests are in favor of digital rights management; relatively few are against it.

It’s more a matter of how long before the Supreme Court decides that free speech trumps copyright and rips the copyright statutes to shreds. Congress isn’t going to fix the problem on its own and is more likely to make it worse than better.

32

It seems to be getting a lot of negative press, let’s hope that will feed opposition.

33

I suppose it isn’t likely to pass no matter what. This could easily turn into a big issue, and anyone who votes for can expect huge negative campaign ads:

“Senator Jimmy X hates you. Senator Jimmy X voted to let record companies hack into your computer at will and destroy your music - whether you got it legally or not. Senator Jimmy X spits on the Constitution. Lets all hunt him down with squirrel rifles.”

If it does pass, I’m starting a grassroots political movement.

34

Very well spoken, Sam, I agree completely. I have discovered some of my favorite artists via mp3 suggestions from friends and even via downloading misattributed files.

“This sure as hell isn’t Foetus…but I’ll be damned if I don’t like it!”

It is disappointing and disgusting that the recording industry has tried baldly to crack down on now-antiquated copyright laws in order to preserve its stranglehold on competition. Its sinister reputation is its just dessert.

It seems like it would be so simple to take the path of least resistance and to react in a way befitting innovative American capitalism. They could give the fifty million file traders what they want. Shocking, I know.

Honestly, if you are on a 56k connection and listen to relatively obscure music, just how often and easily can you download what you are looking for? Are you constantly plagued by cut-off downloads? Is your download for that one song you want “queued remotely”? Do you end up with filenames that do not match the titles you thought you downloaded? Or can you just not find the damn track you want?

It can take a good two or three hours of searching and navigating between multiple clients just to find what you want. Kazaa, WinMX, iMesh, they all have their limitations. I was in college during the golden age of Napster, as it were, happily finding everything I could possibly dream of and felching up as much bandwidth as I wanted on my university T3.

These days are effectively over.

So that raises the question: why do all of the nascent digital music subscription services suck? Either the selection is pitifully small (only including one record label), the content is streaming only (worse than useless), or the fees increase the more music you download (the days of pay per use are long dead). If the recording industry invested half the money it spends litigating and lobbying into research and development of products that music lovers clearly want, I imagine they would not be worrying so much about enforcement of their intellectual property rights.

I would certainly pay $10-$15 a month for services that provide wide selections of high-speed, high-quality, reliable downloads, as would many other independent adults. And quite frankly, the record industry doesn’t have a prayer of stopping kids from trading, who have no disposable income anyway.

It makes little sense to me why they do not take the path of greater profit and least resistance.

35

Pree-cisely.

If instead of all the nasty underhanded krep RIAA/MPAA is trying to keep people from filesharing (making “unrippable” CDs that won’t play on my farging computer’s CD player, suing Napster et al, etc) they would make their OWN systems – even one for each label, that would be fine – that charged, say, $10-$20/month to download guaranteed high-quality, properly-labeled songs, I’d whip out my credit card.

Sure, you’d have people that sucked all the files off there and used them with other filesharing programs. And sure, there’s no good way to stop this apart from screwing with the files (which I personally would have a problem with).

But they would be more than competitive with the filesharing programs already out there.

Now, would that mean that, for example, RCA would sell fewer CDs because good, nice, law-abiding citizens are downloading their music and burning their own CDs instead? Possibly. But people like me who would honestly rather mix their own CDs than buy $80 worth of music that’s worth about $20 in decent music would get that subscription right away. The same people who have their current clearinghouses (10 CDs for 1 cent each!) would cut down their operating costs even more. Why, they could even have a Make-Your-Own-Mix-CD option at an extra cost – you could list the tracks on a CD, even personalize the picture on the non-write side, all for an extra $5/CD?

Maybe they will make less money this way than they do already. I think they’ll make more.

36

Just because the recording industry is a dinosaur that refuses to go extinct like it should does not justify stealing from it. Simply because the recording industry has not conclusively shown that they are suffering financially from file-swapping (nor have file-swappers shown conclusively that they are helping, as I’ve seen some in other fora claim) does not mean that those who are unwilling to pay for music should get it for free.

There are many people who use the file-swapping services to sample new sounds. I’m fairly certain (ok, very certain but without hard data) there are many more who use the services as a way to avoid paying for music, software, etc.

I’m not defending the entertainment industry’s tactics. They are moronic, and they refuse to learn from history. The point I’m trying to make is that stealing from idiots is still stealing.

37

Good point D_Odds, as reprehensible as some of their actions are, that doesn’t justify stealing from the recording industry.

But, being stolen from doesn’t give anyone the moral right to do what they want to do as described in the Berman Bill. I know you didn’t claim it did, but I wanted to point that out.

38

It is a good point. I am hardly stealing because I believe the industry’s conduct somehow justifies it. It is not an oppressive government whose unjust laws I have a duty to disobey. I am hoping and working for, in my small way, a revision of said laws to accommodate technological innovation.

39

Well… No. However, record companies are in violation of the intent of copyright laws, which were designed to balance off the need to provide financial compensation for innovation with the need to develop a rich culture and spread ideas. The same can be said for patents.

As a result, copyright law has provisions for fair use, time limits for how long copyright holders can continue to control their product, etc. The record companies have lobbied to have copyright lifetimes extended, and now they want to eliminate fair use. This does not serve society well, especially in the digital age.

Don’t get me wrong - this is not a justify to expropriate their property. But at the same time, we must be careful not to let them control our society’s access to music and other forms of artistic expression. They used to file lawsuits to prevent libraries from lending out albums, btw. They finally gave up on that.

Look back on the history of technology in the 20th century, the actions the record and movie industries tried to take against it, and then imagine what life would be like if they had won. They tried to block cassette tapes, VCRs, MP3 players, and now file sharing networks. The minidisc format died because of legal hassles with the recording industry.

Today, HDTV is going nowhere, because the content producers want the government to put encryption chips in every single device capable of playing it. The record industry now has a bill in front of congress to MANDATE a ‘digital rights management’ chip in every piece of electronic equipment capable of reproducing or storing digital music. That means every computer, MP3 player, Memory card, CD player, etc. They want their music to be released encrypted, watermarked, and with rights-management so that only the purchaser can use it it, and only on the machine it was originally downloaded to. They want this to be LAW.

That means you’ll purchase a song online and download it to your computer, but if you play it there even once it won’t play in your car, or your MP3 portable, etc. There will no way to make excerpts for fair use purposes like sampling or review. It also means that poorer people with older technology will not be shut out of the loop.

And every time someone cracks the latest encyption, they’ll force us all to upgrade again. They want total control over every aspect of distribution and storage of music. That SUCKS. It would hobble innovation, raise the price of all consumer electronics, and deprive us of our rights.

If the record company was smart, it would embrace digital rather than fighting over it. They should set up their own servers where anyone can download any song in their catalog at low resolution for free. They should develop software better than Kazaa and others like it.

You want to make money from the digital revolution? How about putting kiosks in malls where people can insert $5.00 in change and have it burn a mix disk of five songs they can choose? How about promoting artists and albums by making deals with companies to provide CD’s with sample songs for free, much like AOL does? I think it would be cool if my new Dell came with a ‘Reprise Records Sampler’ CD that had 10 good songs on it, plus a heavy plug for the albums they came from.

The content companies have fought every technological innovation that has come out in the last 30 years. But each time they lose , it turns out that the new technology just makes them more profits. VCR’s didn’t kill the TV industry - they made TV easier to watch, so people watched MORE of it. DVD didn’t kill the movie industry - DVD sales sometimes represent more profit to the studio than theatrical release. And theatrical releases are setting box office records.

By the way, how much do you think record sales are down? 5%. That’s it. I guess all those people copying billions of songs are still buying the CD’s. But that 5% number isn’t even a result of music sharing - it’s the result of the CRAP that record companies are producing today.

Today’s record companies refuse to take chances. They no longer nurture talent - they manufacture bands, get professional songwriters to write ‘safe’ songs for them, put them in front of focus groups and choreographers to ‘polish’ them, then produce an album and market the shit out of it. This does indeed produce hit albums. But what it doesn’t do is sustain an industry. In the old days, bands had longevity. The Grateful Dead recorded over 22 albums before they had a top-10 hit. Mariah Carey makes one flop, and the record company pays millions to buy out her contract rather than risk another.

‘Wilco’, a band that had already put out several good selling albums for Reprise Records, made a great, critically aclaimed album, but because it didn’t fit the ‘formula’ Reprise had fit them into, the record company refused to publish the album. Wilco went to an indy publisher, put the album on their web site for free, and today it’s their best-selling ever. There’s a lesson for the record company in that.

Grammy viewership was at an all-time low this year. If the record company’s theory was correct and file sharing was to blame for the drop in record sales, Grammy viewership should have increased, or at least remained flat. It didn’t. No one cares about the crap they are producing today. ‘Classic Rock’ is still growing, and more and more listeners are turning to the indy scene.

“File Sharing” is just weak justification for the decline of an industry that is badly managed, afraid to take risks, and unable to compete in the marketplace.

40

Damn, nobody but nobody likes what the RIAA does (except maybe the congresspeople whose pockects are lined by the group). Even its stalwart defenders here pinch their noses at them. I have never seen such unaniminity.