[dennisw]

Palestinians threaten RIAA & MPAA with war.
p2pnet.net, Canada - 8 hours ago
JENIN, West Bank, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the email received. FREE,
this is our official response! Earthstation 5 is at war with the Motion. ...
 

Earth Station 5 Declares War Against The Motion Picture ...
PRNewswire (press release) - Aug 19, 2003
FREE Music, FREE Movies, FREE Software and Now FREE Sex Being Beamed
By Earthstation 5 to the Humans for Free JENIN, West Bank, Aug. ...
 

Earth Station 5 Declares War Against The Motion Picture ...
Yahoo News (press release) - Aug 19, 2003
JENIN, West Bank, Aug. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- In response to the email received today
from the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to Earthstation 5 for ...
 

Why the Record Industry Doesn't Stand a Chance
Newhouse News Service (NNS) - 4 hours ago
... The newest place to steal -- sorry, "share" -- copyrighted materials is Earthstation
5. They claim 22 ... They're located in the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank ...
 

Palestinian P2P Earthstation 5 founders try their luck
Dslreports - Aug 15, 2003
"There aren't too many process servers that are going to be coming into the Jenin
(Palestine) refugee camp, says Ras Kabir, co-founder of p2p app Earthstation5 ...
 

P2P in the West Bank
Geek.com - Aug 18, 2003
From the town of Jenin on the West Bank, a P2P company touts a secure forum for file-swappers
to trade their wares online. Earthstation 5, which was started by ...
 

P2P seeks refuge on West Bank
ZDNet.co.uk, UK - Aug 14, 2003
... Manchester, England, with his mother. He now has homes in Jenin and
elsewhere in Palestine, where Earthstation 5 is based, he said. ...
 

File-sharing takes off in West Bank refugee camp
Silicon.com - Aug 14, 2003
... childhood in Manchester with his mother. He now has homes in Jenin and
elsewhere in Palestine, where Earthstation 5 is based, he said. ...
 

File-sharing from a Palestinian refugee camp
Internet Magazine, UK - Aug 15, 2003
... There aren't too many process servers that are going to be coming into the Jenin
refugee camp. We'll welcome them if they do.". Earthstation 5 claims to "break ...
 

RIAA to face a tricky challenge?
Neowin, Netherlands - Aug 14, 2003
... There aren't too many process servers that are going to be coming into the Jenin
refugee camp. We'll welcome them if they do.". On its face, Earthstation 5 ...
 

Earth Station 5 Declares WAR Against the Sex Industry
PRNewswire (press release) - Jul 28, 2003
FREE Music, FREE Movies, FREE Software and Now FREE Sex Being Beamed By Earthstation
5 to the Humans for Free JENIN, West Bank, July 28 /PRNewswire ...
 

Earth Station 5 Declares WAR Against the Sex Industry
Yahoo News (press release) - Jul 28, 2003
JENIN, West Bank, July 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Earthstation 5 today declares
war against the sex industry for all the sex located on the internet. ...
 

[FoxPro]

Actually, the industry that will be in real trouble is the porn industry. Think about it, anybody with camera can make a porno film and put it on the net. And most of the time the stuff the swingers are making in their living rooms is better than the stuff the big porno industry is putting out with their fake boobs and Peter North in every other film.

The variety is refreshing, and well stimulating.

[CanadianLibertarian]

Bump for this article! Jenin, West Bank LOL what aplace to put a download server.

[mo]

When I can load a chunk of "cash" on a 3.5" floppy and cruise mp3 sites and leave some change in 2 mouse clicks-they will be paid for. Presently to churn a credit card transaction through a secure web site over 3-5 minutes and then have to worry about whether or not a script-kiddy has managed to diddle with your plastic just frankly isn't worth it. Plus they'll then capture revenue from the 13 yr old who does'nt have plastic.

[upchuck]

The RIAA is cryin' about copyright. But that's just a cover. They are really cryin' about all the money they're loosing to downloaders.

But they're STOOPID!!

If the RIAA sponsored a humongous data base of just about every song ever recorded, would you pay $1/song to download? I would, gladly. And the RIAA and the recording artists would make a ton of money.

The RIAA and the airline industry have the same problem: Their business model is broken and they're too dumb to figure out a fix.

[upchuck]

They're located in the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank.

Jenin is NOT a refugee camp. Jenin is a full fledged city with streets, houses and probably running water and sewers.

[HP8753]

An analog recording off MTV or VH1 seems of better quality than a lot of the MP3's you can download from some of these sites

[Havoc]

Something the morons from RIAA overlook is that I subscribe to digital radio from my cable provider. I pay for the right to hear music day after day. I can record it from there, I can record it off the radio or I can download an mpg and listen to it. If I'm paying for the service to begin with, then this isn't about whether money is being made or not. Indeed, I have 2 200 cd albums full of original music bought and paid for, plus over 500 cassette tapes. And they're bothered that I should have mpeg versions of the stuff I've already paid for - in some cases two or three times already.

This isn't about them losing money, it's about control. Just as with the DVD market. Shouting about lost profit is the same ploy used in the MPAA case against CSS. It wasn't about profit, it was about control. The MPAA didn't want
someone making an open source driver for the dvd format to be viewed on the Linux platform. They wanted to license the player. And you can't license something that someone else produces. They only want you to be able to listen to music in ways they define. Period.

Treating me like a thief because I have originals of All of Billy Joel's albums on Cassette and CD and decided I'd like MP3's too is unacceptable. Riaa can blow it out their ear.

[quietolong]

Now can anyone tell me why albums that sold for only a few bucks 30 years ago.
Why there CD versions cost $20.00??

[SamAdams76]

The whining from the RIAA about how much money they are losing is one of the biggest scams ever perpetrated upon the American people.

According to my trusty BILLBOARD, the "bible" of the recording industry, over 345,000,000 albums have been sold so far as of 8/3/03. That is a staggering amount of albums considering the outrageous price they are charging for them.

Imagine how many albums would be sold if they were sold at a fair price?

For years, the recording industry has fooled consumers into thinking they were getting "state-of-the-art" technology with CDs and so they willing paid the grossly inflated price. The RIAA had the consumers thinking that producing CDs was a very complicated and expensive process.

The consumers were disabused of these notions over the past few years as they have slowly discovered that CDs are in fact extremely cheap and that they have been getting ripped off all these years.

Consumers now have very inexpensive CD burners in their computers and they can get a stack of 100 blank CDs for less than the price that the RIAA charges for a single pre-recorded CD.

When consumers are getting gouged like this, who can blame them for being upset?

If a consumer can burn a CD at home for about 10 cents, how much do you think it would cost the recording industry to mass-produce them taking advantage of economy of scale? Fact is, the recording industry can produce pre-recorded CDs for under a penny a piece. You heard right. When CDs are mass-produced, the cost is under a penny per CD. Then of course, you need to add the cost of the jewel box and the booklet with liner notes and artwork. But still, we are talking a total cost of well under $1 per CD.

So why is the recording industry still retailing the CD at some $15.98 per album?

Many of us can remember when pre-recorded VCR tapes costed $90. Not many of us bought them but we flocked to video rental stores where we rented them for a few dollars a night. This did not make the movie industry a lot of money. They sold the $90 tapes to video rental stores who then rented them out. Once the initial cost was recovered, it was pure profit for the video rental store from that point on.

Well the movie industry came up with a concept called "sell-through." Instead of selling a few $90 tapes to rental stores, they decided to sell millions of $20 tapes (and later DVDs) to consumers through giant retail chains like Best Buy and Wal-Mart.

The result was that the movie industry made money hand over fist. They began making more money on many titles from video/DVD sales than on box office receipts. In fact, many a box-office flop became a video/DVD moneymaker.

See, the movie industry adapted to the changing marketplace and made a killing. Meanwhile, the RIAA is desparately trying to cling to an antiquated business model. They have the potential to make billions upon billions of dollars by offering their songs online a la carte for a reasonable fee and by dropping the price of their CDs to about the $5 pricepoint.

If they adopted the $5 pricepoint for a CD, they would be flying out the door. They would more than make up in volume what they lose in per-unit profit. But they are too bull-headed and stupid to see this opportunity.

Imagine if you could walk into a record store tomorrow and see the Beatles "Revolver" for $4.98? Or Pink Floyds "Dark Side of The Moon" for $4.98? You would be standing in line at the register for 15 minutes behind about 100 other people. I guarantee it.

[1Old Pro]

They'll sniff that the musicians should give away the product and make their money touring, which is akin to saying restaurants should give away food and make their money selling souvenir forks.

Nope, they give away the food and make their money on drinks. But the no-smoking laws is hurting the drink sales at the bar so they will simply go out of business.

[mhking]

The RIAA is so concerned with trying to cram the genie back in the bottle, that they've become irrelavent. The technology has passed them by, and people are finally beginning to see them for the "protection" racket they actually are.

[ClearBlueSky]

First off let me say that I have never downloaded a piece of music or a video from the net. Not that I wouldn't, but it's still too complicated for this 'techno nerd'. That being said, as much as has been argued about on this issue I have yet to see anyone address the fact that there would BE no 'copying' of anything if there were no machines that offered a 'copy' feature. How much sense does it make to allow the manufacture of things that are designed to duplicate tapes, videos,CD's etc and then scream that the public that bought them uses them for that purpose?
Why isn't the RIAA suing Bill Gates for selling product that allows you to 'steal' from online? It doesn't make any sense to prosecute the end user when the real ' criminals' are those who give them the means to 'steal'. Who designed the file sharing programs, who ok'ed the 'record' feature of anything?
How long will it be before you can't even LISTEN to a recording, or watch a CD/video before you pay for it at home? What are we looking at, VCR's , CD players, even radios that operate only by inserting cash?
That's like saying it's legal to grow tobacco, make and sell cigarettes but illegal to smoke them.
Wait....that's already happening. :-(