RIAA Goes After the Little Guy

wired news ^ | Dec. 16, 2002 | Associated Press

[freepatriot32]

WASHINGTON -- An antipiracy campaign by the recording industry is threatening lawsuits to try to force stores to pull pirated music from their shelves.

The Recording Industry Association of America said Monday it is demanding a halt to illegal music sales at gas stations, convenience stores, groceries and some small music stores that the group has identified as offering illegal copies of music recordings.

[freepatriot32]

Counterfeit CDs sold across the United States cost music companies $300 million a year

wait i thought napster cost them 300 mill a year then kazaa then gnutzella

[TommyDale]

Here's where the RIAA should spend their efforts -- on people who make illegal copies FOR SALE! Leave those of us who copy OUR OWN CD'S AND TAPES alone. After all, we paid for them once, then we paid a fee for the blanks. How many times does the RIAA expect us to pay?

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

BOYCOTT THE MUSIC BIZ!! STOP SPENDING MONEY ON CDs THAT ONLY HAVE ONE OR TWO GOOD SONGS ON THEM!!

[Abcdefg]

I believe it is currently legal to copy your own CDs and tapes for archival purposes.

[eno_]

Correct!

This is real piracy. Gnutella is not: you are not making a profit, hence you are not a pirate. It may not be the intent of the Fair Use doctrine that you share so openly, and it may be unfair to authors that you do so, but to compare P2P sharing to this kind of piracy is what got everyone annoyed at the RIAA.

[BlazingArizona]

Ever wonder why a movie soundtrack CD often costs more than the CD of the same movie?

[Larry Lucido]

Agreed. That's why the title is misleading. If the store is selling pirated CD's (or, for that matter, photocopies of my master's thesis on ERISA remedies) without permission, then who cars if the store owner is a "little guy." That's just plain inflammatory, IMO.

[proxy_user]

Many of these are bootlegs, not counterfeits.

[Malcolm]

Hiliary Rosen lost some weight and changed her hair. Not that this will aid in her efforts, but maybe she thinks it will.....

[Malcolm]

LOL, what would we buy then???

[AAABEST]

I agree.

I hate the RIAA buggy whip makers and their pathetic attempts to mold all technology to fit their bottom line.

However, this is real piracy. It's one thing for a 14 year old to DL a Metallica track, it's another for Achmed the convenience store owner to be selling entire CDs.

[Nephi]

What about an internet based club in which you exchange your actual cd with others. What you do with it once it is in your possession is up to you, of course.

The club would charge a membership fee, and let people post their collection so that others could contact them about exchange.

Your identity would be rated according to the quality of the cd's you trade and speed of the exchange, etc.

[FastNBulbous]

...to compare P2P sharing to this kind of piracy is what got everyone annoyed at the RIAA.

But the result is often the same (author/record label isn't credited with a sale). So if you don't want to call it piracy, fine. But you can't pretend that it's impossible for P2P "sharing" to have an adverse economic effect on authors in much the same way that counterfeiting does.

[Squawk 8888]

sales of compact discs dropped 7 percent in the first half of 2002 after falling 5 percent in 2001

Well, it must be piracy causing the slump. No way it could have anything to do with the quality of product being offered by the record companies...

[Timesink]

I don't have any problem with this. These guys are selling counterfeit items FOR PROFIT. That's entirely different from for-personal-use P2P services.

[babaloo999]

Wait for stolen cd's to show up in the pawn shop, or hit the used bins. Half.com.ebay has some good stuff sometimes.

[joebuck]

"I believe it is currently legal to copy your own CDs and tapes for archival purposes."

Not if you have to defeat copy protection code to do so. Thus, if you rip, encode and store the music tracks as MP3's you are OK. If you have to use the the magic marker trick to do the same thing on a copy protected CD you are violating the DMCA and it is a criminal violation.

[weegee]

I heard ABC radio news reporting on this last night. Because of the political correctness though, I am unclear as to what kind of piracy they are talking about. Is this the mix-tape (on CD) that black people have been selling for 20 years now (with no outcry from the RIAA), is this is $1-$3 bootleg CD (with color copied packaging) that is available in Mexico (for many bands that are not even covered by RIAA action and therefore see none of the money gathered by such actions)?

What are we talking about here? What are the neighborhoods?

Gas stations I go to all sell commercially maufactured cassettes for truck drivers (old country, a little (old) top 40, and some Rudy Ray Moore comedy cassettes).

I'd like to see one of these reports about how the RIAA goes busting on bars for having the television set on and a Burger King ad comes on with a song and the RIAA wants money from the bar for that.

[weegee]

The recording industry tried in the early 1980s to prohibit libraries from loaning out CDs because they claimed that listeners at home would be able to make "too good" of copies.

There were also the artists at Sony and other labels that got upset that some listeners would actually dare to sell their unwanted CDs so that others could buy them USED. That "robs" the artists and labels of money (it has been claimed).

I don't see us being too far off from only buying a "license" to the personal use of the music on the album and therefore (like with some software packages), in absence of an authorized license from the manufacturer to resell the CD, be prohibited from selling it used.

[weegee]

You are permitted to home tape a tv program (Supreme Court ruling for Sony Betamax and against Hollywood). I would believe the same to be true of radio content and cassettes.

So someone can obtain songs without paying the artists although as we enter the digital realm for recording video and audio the industry is leaning on technology manufacturers to bar the recording of certain signals (including broadcast). Digital Copyright Millenium Act prohibits architecting schemes around those erected barriers even though the Supreme Court ruled such taping to be fair use.

The industry is getting to write the laws that govern us.