RIAA is out of control.

[icarus]

From morgandawn:

Those MP3 and AAC files that you've ripped from your CD collection arestill "unauthorized copies" in the eyes of the recording industry. In abrief filed late last week, the RIAA said that the MP3 files on a PCowned by a file-sharing defendant who had admitted to ripping themhimself were "unauthorized copies."

RIAA is completely out of control.

So let me get this straight.

If you don't pay for the music, you get prosecuted for stealing.

If you do pay for the music, you still get prosecuted for stealing.

Where is the incentive to pay for the music? The consequences are the same.

When is RIAA going to get that music has been available for free for the last century on this thing called "radio"? And that they need to create an internet streaming version of radio, quick, or else song swapping will be the only way people will hear of new music.

Comments

[femmequixotic]

I remember the days when we used to tape the radio (or MTV for that matter) for hours just to get a few of our favourite songs to pull onto a mixtape because we were poor kids who couldn't afford to pay for a full cassette (or LP) just for one or two songs we liked off an album....

*suddenly feels ancient*

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I remember doing that.

[wenelda.livejournal.com]

i did that, too.

of course, i also remember dancing with a broom in our den while mum recorded from an LP to a cassette and it sounded like the chipmunks singing bob segar and simon and garfunkel... *g*

[slrcosmos.livejournal.com]

Me and my best friend used to do that all the time. There was always a blank tape in the radio when we were listening to the radio. My first mix tape.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

I have tapes going back to 1980 of stuff I taped off the radio, some of which is damn hard to find today.

[magic-8ball.livejournal.com]

Nope, I want to line up with everyone else and admit to having done that. I even have a few of those old cassettes still lying around somewhere.

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

I'm still crammed with American history and the RIAA's actions are making strange connections in my mind with the policies of the Gilded Age and the 1920's.

Viva La Revolucion

[whatifisaidno.livejournal.com]

*This country is destined to repeat its past. In semantically different forms.

[blackletter]

And that they need to create an internet streaming version of radio, quick, or else song swapping will be the only way people will hear of new music.

Pandora

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

I loved Pandora... when it was still working for non-Americans. GRRRR!

[chasethecat.livejournal.com]

Have you tried www.last.fm?

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip, I'll be checking it out.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

I really like Pandora. It doesn't actually work all that well over a dial-up connection, but when we get DSL -- this will be vastly improved.

[wenelda.livejournal.com]

... so. these people have nothing better to do, i take it.

this does make me a tad bit nervous, but then, i'm always paranoid about big brother, etc. especially since i've been in trouble with the law before. but this seems rather ridiculous, and i've noticed there are more and more frivolous lawsuits coming about lately. what the hell is wrong with everyone? is it something in the water? are petrol prices making people that nutters? i don't know, but this is an almost frightening trend, really.

[rike-tikki-tavi.livejournal.com]

I had a similar discussion once, on a tech fair with a guy from the German version of the RIAA. It was about copy protection and he didn't seem to get that people, once they shelled out 15 EUROS for a CD, want to be able to hear the music anywhere and on any device they choose, including mp3 players. The guy couldn't get it through his head that I won't pay twice for the same content to have it on CD and as mp3.

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

It does seem like this is the latest iteration of the recording industry struggling with the implications of a "new" technology.

I mean, thinking about it... so first, you had gramophone records made of various materials like hard rubber, shellac, vinyl, etc. You bought those, and you were pretty much locked into single use for them. I think the 50s or 60s is the earliest that you get people being able to afford machinery that would let them record and play reel-to-reel magnetic tape copies made from vinyl records, but I don't think that technology was all *that* common in private consumer use. Compact cassette develops in the 60s and 70s to the point where consumers can own the technology and use it to record LP records -- and the music industry throws all kinds of fits. (Much like the film industry will later do with VCRs.) Especially since the cassettes can not only copy from LPs (once that technology comes out, anyway), but also from radio, which again, previously, was not manipulable by the consumer. (Consumers never could, on their own, create a vinyl LP record.)

Desperate, they try to introduce the 8-track tape, which enjoys a brief, faddish popularity, but like the LP record, consumers can't manipulate it (they can't even select which track to play easily, as you can on a record). Its popularity dies. Coincidence? I doubt it. So the 80s come, and now it's CDs, which initially, again, were non-manipulable by consumers. It takes a few years before machines that will let you record CDs to cassette tapes come on the market for consumers. It takes a bit longer for the MP3 revolution to hit, and here we are now.

Would that the RIAA or anyone else in the music industry could step back and look at the history of recorded media in a short, succinct form, as I just did (more or less off the top of my head, with a brief check on Wikipedia for some dates), and SEE THE OBVIOUS PATTERN.

Yes, Recording Industry. We get it. We get that you got really, really used to that Golden Era of LP records, when the technology to cut one's own record wasn't ever in widespread consumer hands. We get that you thought that the advent of the recordable cassette tape (the first time, arguably, that recording technology became cheap enough to mass-market to consumers) was DOOM, and you have been flailing with increasing desperation for some 40 years.

The barn door's open, RIAA. The horses are GONE. Get OVER it.

[aerynvala.livejournal.com]

OMG Word! You said it just right. Nice and clear and concise. Also, with humor, which always rocks.

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

I should have added: it wouldn't surprise me if there were brief periods right after the introduction of new recording formats, when the recording industry got what they wanted (i.e. the same thing they seem to want now). After all -- my family re-purchased a number of albums that it owned as LPs on the new 8-track format, purely for the novelty value. And, I can remember a period right after CDs came out, but before CD players that could record to cassette tape were common, when I might indeed have bought a CD, and then separately purchase the same album on a commercial cassette in order to listen to it in the car, because my car didn't have a CD player. Plus, I'm sure the RIAA was just GIDDY about the fact that many people really did re-purchase albums on CD when they already owned them on LP record.

Still, the recording industry complained about consumers being able to record their own cassette tapes, both from turntable records and from radio and from CDs. One assumes that their current hysteria has a lot to do with the exponential increase in the volume of re-recording.

(Another interesting development: I've only been aware, in the past couple of years, of the advent of affordable technology that would enable me to convert LP records or cassette tapes to MP3s -- the last horizon, as it were. I could, right now, buy a turntable that hooks up by USB to my computer, for something like $150 or $200 -- which is not that bad for a limited-use gadget. I *did* re-purchase many of my old LPs on CD, and naturally, ripped them to my computer for use on my iPod. But there's a handful of LP records and cassettes that I have never been able to locate released on CD. It's not quite worth it to me yet to drop $150+ in order to get that stuff into digital format -- but I've no doubt as to my *right* to do it, especially when the recording industry refuses to release those things on CD, thereby actively thwarting me from giving them money.)

At any rate, the fact that for those brief periods after the intro of new formats, the recording industry got the re-purchasing bump that it wanted, must have gone a long way towards cementing their feeling that re-purchase was their business right.

I'm not, mind you, trying to justify the RIAA's stupid position. I'm just trying to muse about where they came up with these strongly-held notions of what they want consumers to do. I think that the fact that recordings were distributed in non-manipulable formats for so many decades, and then the fact that there were periods where people really did re-purchase material they already owned in a new format when they wanted to listen to it in a new way/location, probably explains why they're sitting there thinking it's perfectly logical to expect me to re-purchase an album in MP3 format for my iPod when I already own it on CD.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Just because someone is deluded doesn't mean that there aren't perfectly good reasons for that delusion. *g*

I add my rendition of WORD! (The first time I've ever used it.)

[orca-girl.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's useful to realize that this isn't a completely fantastical delusion, but it's based in part on actual consumer behaviors at certain points in recording history. And the RIAA is perhaps leaping on those behaviors and saying, "yes, that's what we wanted people to do!"

But it sure is ignoring a big ol' chunk of what is also reality: that consumers have always leapt upon technology that allows them to create cross-platform copies without having to re-purchase. At least, they've always leapt on that opportunity as soon as the purchase-price of the technology itself fell below a certain threshold. And it's just a fact that technology is always going to advance and prices for it are always going to fall.

My LP-to-MP3 thing is a good example. Right now, if the RIAA offered me a CD (or direct MP3!!!) copy of Andrew Lloyd Webber's original 24-minute test rendition of "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat" (... shut up), I would give them money for it, although I already own it on LP and on cassette. I would re-purchase it because the price-point of the CD or MP3-album would presumably be low enough that I'd be willing to drop the money on it, in comparison with the high cost (IMO) of a device that would allow me to digitize the LP or the cassette. Those devices are now in the "I could think about buying one" price-range, but not in "the purchase of the device is a no-brainer" price-range.

For me, that's as much or more a convenience/cost equation as it is a "I've already bought the music in one format once and I shouldn't have to pay for it again!" moral position. If the price of the device feel even more sharply, it might wind up at the level where I'd be willing to buy it in order to digitize the ca. 5 or 6 LPs that I can't seem to get digitally any other way. (And I think the convenience/cost vs. moral question is also illustrated by the fact that when Apple introduces the iTunes store, it made money. It certainly made me go there first rather than to download sites, and I haven't bought an actual, physical CD in a long while, now. Yes, RIAA, we'll purchase digital copies of songs, if that's made possible for us, and if you don't try to over-charge us for them as we had begun to suspect you were doing with CDs.)

I wonder if there are RIAA execs somewhere who are gnashing their teeth over the fact that vinyl LPs proved resistant to easy mass private consumer copying for so long, and their beloved CDs (which looked like such a windfall at the time) proved so compatible with the idea? I guess the rest of us are just lucky that it didn't occur to the RIAA much, much earlier in the history of CD technology to build-in ways to make them harder to rip.

[retrofit88.livejournal.com]

They've been maintaining this position for some years now, actually. The thing is, they _were_ getting paid for radio. By the radio stations. They aren't getting paid for what they're thinking of as an additional copy when you rip your CDs to MP3. Honestly speaking, how many people actually _keep_ all the CDs they buy after they rip them? They don't - the CDs get passed on to someone else, possibly several times.

Which is not to say that I actually sympathize with their draconian and stupid positions. It's just, if you accept their basic premise, which is that they need to get paid for _every_ copy (their dream is to get paid for every second that you listen to something), it's at least internally consistent.

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

What? I have all my CDs. So does wildernessguru. I don't give them away. I still have my cassette tapes, too. Heck, who would get rid of their CDs? I've had a gazillion computer crashes. And I still have a CD player with a cassette deck hooked up to a really nice stereo system. Plus the CD player in the car.

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Er, a lot of people I know keep the CD's they like (and an increasing amount only buy they CDs they really like in the first place). copies are for the mp3-player, the computer*, the car... I think at least 3 personal copies should be allowed without fuss, preferably some more.

* as a side note, I double-hate copy protection that makes it impossible to play a CD in winamp or similar. How am I supposed to make my mixed music playlists now?

[icarusancalion.livejournal.com]

Aside from the practical reasons, I keep CDs around because... they're mine. I paid for them. It may make no sense but, that's what happens in my brain.

Item purchased therefore mine mine mine.

Icarus

[dancing-moon.livejournal.com]

Haha, no, I know exactly what you mean.

I have sometmes bought crap manga and/or books but i keep them because... they're mine! Bought and paid for

But when I get manga for free (to review) well, suddenly I have no compulsions to give the bad or so-so ones away. what the heck, I've read it won't read again meh...

Psychology is perplexing sometimes.

[retrofit88.livejournal.com]

I agree; I actually keep my CDs. But it's increasingly less common.

Or people will share the MP3s they rip with friends and family, which again is not just a time- or place-shifting personal copy. I had a lot of trouble explaining to my aunt what is wrong, traditional-copyright-wise, with her buying a CD, burning a copy for herself, and then giving the original to her daughter.

And again, I'll say, I don't actually agree with the RIAA (well, I'm conflicted on the example my aunt presents, but I'm all for x-shifting personal use.

[mark356.livejournal.com]

Not to mention all the music you can borrow from the library!