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Posted on 01/19/2003 9:48:39 AM PST by jimkress
The result of holding ISPs liable for the ways their customers use them would be catastrophic. Should ISPs be held accountable for the actions of pedophiles? How about members of racist groups? How about groups that are legal but we wish weren't, like the KKK, Aryan Nation, and the American Polka Dancing Society?
While ISPs are held accountable for removing illegal materials when detected, the idea that they should be held accountable for what their users might do is ridiculous.
Its astonishing that after so many months the RIAA continues to ignore what its consumers have been screaming in its face. We don't see the recording industry moving to address problems of overwhelming same-ness in music, high CD prices, or low artist compensation.
Even their competing download services are a joke, with draconian requirements, high fees, and—my favorite—the ability to delete your music in the event you stop paying for the monthly service. Did I mention you can't burn any of your music library either? What a joke.
If the RIAA had been thinking during the Napster battle they'd have swallowed their pride and cut a deal with the service (which was, after all, owned by a music company), whose downloads they could monitor and whose users could be tracked.
While they were busy grinding the life out of Napster, however, its evolving successors took shape, minus the technical and legal flaws that had brought Napster's downfall. Now the RIAA is preparing to take on Kazaa -- a much more complicated process, given that company's foreign status. But even as they do, a new generation of file serving technology is doubtlessly under construction — one deemed at making its users even harder to trace or discover.
Promoting copyright restrictions and digital rights management technology is not going to solve the music industry's problem. From a technological standpoint it's unfeasible—there will always be a way to intercept the output from a stereo system and redirect it for copying purposes. Such methods can be made more difficult and time consuming, but they cannot be completely eradicated.
Even if the RIAA could choke off unlicensed sound completely, it still has a bigger problem to face in the dissatisfaction of its customers. Somewhere along the line, the music industry has decided it can control how consumers listen to music without consulting them. You can't bludgeon people to obey rules they've already decided violate their principles of fair use and in this day and age you can't keep them from doing something about it. It's time for the RIAA to either face and accept that fact or get used to seeing a lot of red ink. µ
You want to stop the RIAA? Organize a one year, world wide boycott of all music products. Send the sales of the members of RIAA to zero. Then they will be willing to negotiate, on our terms.
After all, music is not like food. It's not required to sustain life. We can subsist on all our existing CDs, LPs, MP3s, etc. until we bring the RIAA to heel.
WHen I deed a job years ago a buddy talked me into joining the ASCAP music police with him. THe money was OK, but the job sucked big time. And the people running the operation were first class boobs.
prisoner6
This is not the first time this has happened
How the hell are we supposed to avoid duplicate posts if the friking FR search 'tool' doesn't work?
The funny thing was, Napster really showed the RIAA the future: As the author pointed out, the RIAA could have used the Napster approach and upgraded it, then allowed people (for a monthly fee) to access and burn music via a Napster-like portal.
Their other alternative would have been to cut CD prices significantly to make them more competitive with the cost of the time one has to spend to download and burn one's own CDs. But since they're still caught up in their old business model, there was no way they were going to do that.
Instead they're playing whack-a-mole, knocking down Napster only to see several other providers pop up.
Ten years from now the RIAA approach will be a business failure case study for just about every MBA program in the country.
After all, music is not like food. It's not required to sustain life. We can subsist on all our existing CDs, LPs, MP3s, etc. until we bring the RIAA to heel.
Why boycott all CD's? There are many CD's which are not produced, sold, or in any way affiliated with the RIAA. The natural response to an RIAA boycott should be the publication of a lot more 'covers' or RIAA disks by non-RIAA artists. Under existing copyright law, anyone wanting to do a cover of an piece of music that has been released commercially in recorded form can do so by getting a compulsory license and paying the composer 8 cents per copy per song (i.e. about $1.20 on a 15-track CD). Note that the RIAA gets completely shut out of this transaction, and if the work was originally done by a singer-songwriter, that person may actually net more money than they would if you bought their record.
P.S. I'm already in full participation.
Arrogant because they believe they should have total control over what music you listen to and when; dumb because last year they were given a not-so-subtle warning by some hackers.
I am just going to sit back and watch as these fools go down in flames.
We can starve out the industry because there is a surplus of music recordings available to the consumer.
Right now Big Media has a lock on distribution, store placement, advertising/promotion, and radio play. Intenet distribution of all artists levels the playing field too much.
| I am just going to sit back and watch as these fools go down in flames.
Somebody with some music-business sense needs to get in there and kick some butts, and throw her over the side while they're at it. If they keep her in there much longer, they'll be watching their trade association suing their customers. This whole approach is madness. |
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This is what happens when you let lawyers run business policy. I'm sure that this behavior all seems very reasonable to Hilary Rosen; she's doing what any lawyer would do to protect her clients. It's just that this isn't a legal problem. She is the proverbial person with the hammer, to whom all problems are nails.