RIAA facing RICO?

[jj]

Okay, so let's assume that the total cost of the CD is $8.

That still means the studios would have a profit margin of 120%.

Actually, it's the distributors who get a lot of that.

Now, for extra credit, who owns the distribution chain?

 

[Wrath of the Swarm]

Note: I did the math wrong the first time. It's about 125%.

So why not abolish the whole system?

 

[bignickel]

I've always been of the opinion that music should be treated no differantly than books.

IE 'publish' albums.

Artists retain all the rights, and get most of the money. The studios would probably spend alot less on promotion at that point, I warrent. 'Home-made' music videos again? With digital video: why not?

 

[Segnosaur]

But now, we have huge amounts of CD quality music floating around the Internet for free. And the reason that someone would bother to get the album, when they already have all the songs on their hard would be...?

Keep in mind that a lot of music 'floating around the internet' isn't CD quality... its been compressed, and depending on the persion who made the file, it may have lost substantial quality. (Not to mention songs being cut off, etc.)

And there are some reasons that people may still get the album... convenience (less time downloading), unavailability (you may find a few 'hit songs' on the internet, but maybe not all songs on an album), curiosity (you hear a few songs on the internet, but want to hear more), or even just plain old good intentions (you download some songs, but you buy a CD just to be a nice guy).

So, in the end: theft is theft. If I've gotten any songs I d/led from the internet, then I'm as guilty as the next guy. Only differance is, I recognize my guilt, rather than try to rationalize it away be redefining the definition of 'theft' as obsolete.

Taping off the radio was also theft.

A few things should be kept in mind:
- As others have mentioned, there is an incredible mark up on CDs. The artist actually gets very little in the way of compensation per CD
- As with radio, the internet could be a very successful vehicle for advertising artists, in order to get people to attend concerts (or even buy the CD)
- The fight against CDs has lead to many really bad activities by the record companies. One such thing was the introduction of 'copy protected' CDs. (Unfortunately, in their efforts to make copy protected CDs, they've released disks that won't play on all CD players. They've also taken away your legal right to make backup copies.)

 

[bignickel]

Keep in mind that a lot of music 'floating around the internet' isn't CD quality... its been compressed, and depending on the persion who made the file, it may have lost substantial quality. (Not to mention songs being cut off, etc.)

True, until you find the CD quality version (or near enough) and download the album.

Taping off the radio was also theft.

A. The music industry allowed songs to be played on the radio because it advertised the album. They knew that even if people taped it, they'd still have to buy the album to get a high enough quality version of it (even if the station played the entire album, as my local station KSHE95 used to do every Sunday night back in the 80s).
B. Only the hits songs on the album got played on the radio. Having the entire album played would be extremely rare (see above). Quite differant nowadays, where albums on the Internet are the rule, not the exception.

- As others have mentioned, there is an incredible mark up on CDs. The artist actually gets very little in the way of compensation per CD

Immaterial: whoever owns the product will charge what the market will bear. Don't want to buy it? Then don't. But if you steal or copy it... you're stealing it.

- As with radio, the internet could be a very successful vehicle for advertising artists, in order to get people to attend concerts (or even buy the CD)

It is already. Companies use the internet just like radio to promote the bands they have contracts with. But immaterial to people using napster to grab hard drives and hard drives full of free albums.

- The fight against CDs has lead to many really bad activities by the record companies. One such thing was the introduction of 'copy protected' CDs. (Unfortunately, in their efforts to make copy protected CDs, they've released disks that won't play on all CD players. They've also taken away your legal right to make backup copies.)

Further agreed. See my first post about wanting to take the RIAA down a peg or two. But, in the end, immaterial. The tactics that the music industry uses to fight theft does not affect whether copying albums off the internet is theft or not. It is either is, or isn't, and the tactics that the RIAA uses does not affect that decision.

 

[Segnosaur]

True, until you find the CD quality version (or near enough) and download the album.

Its been a long time since I looked at any file-sharing programs (last time was with Napster and Gnutella), but with those programs, downloads were available on a per-song basis. Are you saying that other search engines do allow all-album downloads?

Immaterial: whoever owns the product will charge what the market will bear. Don't want to buy it? Then don't. But if you steal or copy it... you're stealing it.

You're right, users should just not buy albums if they don't like the terms. The problem is, the regular rules of supply and demand don't apply to the recording industry. The RIAA acts as a monopoly.

It is already. Companies use the internet just like radio to promote the bands they have contracts with. But immaterial to people using napster to grab hard drives and hard drives full of free albums.

No, they're not using the internet 'just like radio'; if they were, they'd regularly have full songs by the artists to listen to. A more appropriate anology would be to say they're using the internet like a newspaper add or magazine, giving information and/or ads, but they don't give much indication of whether their music is really any good.

Further agreed. See my first post about wanting to take the RIAA down a peg or two. But, in the end, immaterial. The tactics that the music industry uses to fight theft does not affect whether copying albums off the internet is theft or not. It is either is, or isn't, and the tactics that the RIAA uses does not affect that decision.

Downloading songs from the internet may be illegal; the question is, is the law in the best interest of justice? (In other words, is it a good idea to ignore a bad law, especially if the reasoning behind the law is based on corrupt business practices and a lack of understanding of consumer choices.)

It should also be noted that there are certain legal loopholes in the law:
- When you buy an album, you have the rights to the songs for personal use. I'm not a lawyer, but it seems to me that if you bought an album with song X, you should be able to download song X from the internet too
- There is a copyright rule that allows you to make copies of songs for family and friends. In fact that is the rule that Napster tried using, suggesting that all the people involved in its file sharing system were really an extended group of friends

For another take on the RIAA, see this rather interesting article by Courtney Love (not a fan of hers, but it looks like she's got some interesting opinions): http://archive.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/06/14/love/print.html

 

[Solitaire]

Do. Not. Say. "50 Cents".

O-diss - 50 Cent.mp3

 

[CFLarsen]

O-diss - 50 Cent.mp3

My spirit will haunt you for all eternities for that...

 

[jnelso99]

- The fight against CDs has lead to many really bad activities by the record companies. One such thing was the introduction of 'copy protected' CDs. (Unfortunately, in their efforts to make copy protected CDs, they've released disks that won't play on all CD players. They've also taken away your legal right to make backup copies.)

I found it amusing when copy-protected audio CD's came out that Sony, who hold the patent or trademark for "Compact Disc" or something like that, always referred to them as "CD-like objects" because "real" CD's aren't supposed to be copy-protected.

I also found it amusing when, I think it was the tail end of last year, when file sharing was reported to be lower than normal, that music profits STILL dropped. So much for "file-sharing is causing music profits to go down the dumper" theory...

Personally, I haven't bought a CD in months. I have a few on my Amazon wish list, and I'll be trying to buy them as directly from the artist as I can, but I'm an unemployed software engineer whose eight years of experience means absolutely diddly-squat these days, so I won't be buying any new CD's any time soon.

 

[ssibal]

The false assumption with illegal downloading is that the downloader would have bought the record if they could not have downloaded the album. There is no evidence of this. And people who care about sound quality would probably buy the album (or copy from a friend which there is no way the RIAA can get you). Very few people download wav, shn, or flac, its almost all mp3 which nomatter what anyone says is not CD quality. The only band I download that is a RIAA member, I only get bootlegs which I guess are illegal anyway, I already legally own all the official material.

 

[Fade]

The false assumption with illegal downloading is that the downloader would have bought the record if they could not have downloaded the album

That's the way I see this issue as well.

There haven't been any conclusive studies done to prove that file sharing has lead to decline in record sales.

I would think the decline of sales is a combonation of many factors.

First, and formost, the prices of CD's have gone *up* while the cost to manufacture those CD's have gone *down*

Don't believe me? This book will teach you how to make and sell your very own albums. There are hundreds of self produced and self distributed artists out there that are, while being relatively poor, still creating wealth using this system.

The cost I would pay for music is disproportionate to the cost that has gone into that record. Average margin in the US would be what, 20%? There is no way one can justify upwards of 100% markup. The market is obviously not baring this, as evidenced by declining record sales.

Second, the quality of music is dropping quickly. Whenever one band goes out of style (Backstreet Boys!) another pops up to take it's place. When that form gets tiresome, another form rises up to take it's place. A few companies are guiding this push, and they are destroying music. By giving literally talentless people with a certain image immense record contracts, writing their music for them, altering their voices using digital methods to make it appear as if they can sing, and then dressing them up like puppets, we somewhat lose what music is "supposed" to be about.

Take a look at the manner of albums coming out today. Most artists, or non-artists are forced to compile 10-15 songs. Usually 2 or 3 of these is quality, and the rest is obvious filler. In my (extremely vast) collection of music, i've only encountered 10 or so albums which I would consider golden all the way through, without filler of any sort. Half a century ago, artists routinely would put out only a few tunes at a time. These would be great songs, great music. Every once in a while, a great collection of music be put out. In the 60's and 70's, album rock evolved. Instead of a few hits, we get a lot of music at all at once.

Now, everyone is forced to take this sort of path. What it means for garbage pop boybands is more money, what it means for serious artists is a series of hurdles they constantly need to jump over. It's all to common to put out something absolutely brilliant (To Venus and Back!) and have the rest of your albums suffer from not quite achieving what you did in that break-through album, except for one or two tunes.

Anyway, I for one and going to refuse to buy CDs until I am allowed to choose what I want to buy, on an individual basis, and those songs I do chose aren't marked up several times what they took to produce, package, market, and distribute.

 

[ktesibios]

I found it amusing when copy-protected audio CD's came out that Sony, who hold the patent or trademark for "Compact Disc" or something like that, always referred to them as "CD-like objects" because "real" CD's aren't supposed to be copy-protected.

I also found it amusing when, I think it was the tail end of last year, when file sharing was reported to be lower than normal, that music profits STILL dropped. So much for "file-sharing is causing music profits to go down the dumper" theory...

If a CD doesn't conform to the "Red Book" standard (which copy-protected CDs don't), you can't use the "Compact Disc Digital Audio" logo on it.

That 80 cent figure sounds about right for manufacturing cost. If you shop around you can get a small (a couple thousand) run of CDs pressed for around that figure; manufacturing cost for mass-produced CDs is probably lower.

It's a convenient figure to throw around to obscure what's really locked up in those 1s and 0s- an awful lot of human labor. Just the lead vocal on a 3 or 4-minute song might well have taken more than an entire working day to record- I've spent more than eight hours doing vocal punches, trying to get a complete performance that would pass muster- and had to come back to it the next day. Every part in a song is likely the product of hours of work, not even counting all the time spent in pre-production.

Appropriating the product of someone else's work without consent or compensation is theft. It really is that simple.

It's true that artists don't generally get a fair share of the revenues generated by their work- but downloading the product of that work for free does nothing to remedy the wrong and much to compound it. Nobody can earn any royalties on an album that isn't sold.

Finally, let me add a personal dimension to the discussion. I've worked in the recording industry for over a decade and a half, as a techie and as an engineer. Besides all the obscure local band CDs I've cut and mixed, you can go into a record store and buy major label releases that have my name on them. There's even a platinum plaque hanging on my living room wall. As a result I can claim a pretty intimate familiarity with the record-making process and the amount of work that goes into producing that tune that you can download in a few minutes. My decidedly working-class livelihood derives from selling my knowledge to studios, engineers, producers and even artists.

The complaints about downloading issuing from the executive suites are very likely a smokescreen to conceal the ill effects of label monopoly, media monopoly and the stupid and self-serving mismanagement of a load of clueless suits who wouldn't recognize music worth producing if it were dangling from their scrotums by six-inch steel teeth- an opinion, I might add, which is shared by some very prominent engineers I've discussed this with. The RIAA types do desperately deserve a good spanking, and you'll find this opinion to be common among those of us who serve in the trenches of the actual production process.

But if anyone reading this thread should be tempted to rip off music which the creators have not freely chosen to make available for free download, let them remember- you're not sticking it to The Man- you're sticking it to me - that weird guy Ktesibios. That's my bread you're snatching away.

*sigh* The music industry used to be run by thugs and gangsters. Now it's infested by lawyers and MBAs and things. We need the thugs and gangsters back- they had better ears and broader minds.

 

[Questioninggeller]

Big differance between copying music off the radio and buying the album: the radio copy bites.

If you want high quality, you had to go get the albums. Which, as a young lad, I did.

But now, we have huge amounts of CD quality music floating around the Internet for free. And the reason that someone would bother to get the album, when they already have all the songs on their hard would be...?

So, in the end: theft is theft. If I've gotten any songs I d/led from the internet, then I'm as guilty as the next guy. Only differance is, I recognize my guilt, rather than try to rationalize it away be redefining the definition of 'theft' as obsolete.

That said: I hope that her lawsuit works. The RIAA is too powerful, and needs to be taken down a peg or two.

We have now DVD audio in 5.1 that certain bands and albums are selling. Those files aren't swappable, yet. If the consumer wants full 5.1 stereo (way better than 2.1), they have to buy the albums.

I think its crappy music with overrated, overpromoted albums hurts industry. Like all industries there are times when sales don't do well, this is no different. I've bought (and in my opinion over paid) for 5 albums this year, and not one of them has been anything memorable that has grown on me. How many times has the major labels been sued for overpricing? CD's cost 15 cents to produce, an artists at the most before taxes makes 23 cents, a producer makes 20 cents, and retail is 2-3 dollars... I think 18 dollars for a band that plays the four-four is a little much.

Also look at it this way. With the RIAA going into people's computer seeing MP3s that are lablelled as something, how are they going to tell a song from a major label artist and someone's brother's garage band? Will they listen to each MP3 on everyone's computer, or just assume a person with a lot MP3's is guilty.

 

[Questioninggeller]

Appropriating the product of someone else's work without consent or compensation is theft. It really is that simple.

It's true that artists don't generally get a fair share of the revenues generated by their work- but downloading the product of that work for free does nothing to remedy the wrong and much to compound it. Nobody can earn any royalties on an album that isn't sold.

Well put. I agree if someone doesn't want their music available people shouldn't download it, but not many people will respect that. At the same time the RIAA isn't going about this the right way, and the majority of artists are wimping out on the subject.

The companies who own the labels are the ones selling the techonology to the consumers. One of the flaws of captialism. The store owner will sell you the gun that you can rob him with.

 

[evildave]

Eighty cents is very near the mark for packaged CD production. CD mass production (Runs of 20,000~100,000), with jewel cases and inserts is incredibly cheap. Shop for it. They advertise for CD production on the internet. The distribution chain for media is extremely efficient. If they wholesaled the CDs at $2.50 per disc, they'd net $1.70 for each disc sold. Even if they shipped 200-count boxes via UPS (ulta-inefficient, from a distribution perspective), it would end up costing $0.05 extra per disc.

Even at a retail price of $5, still nobody would buy them.

CD Music is going the way that 8-track and cassette and vinyl music went. This time, the recording industry doesn't WANT to adapt.

Most people want certain songs, and don't want to set aside 1,000 cubic feet of CD storage for all the CDs they'd have to buy to be "legal", versus the space a single hard drive consumes*. It usually turns out there are three songs an artist recorded that you liked, and they're on three different CDs. And two of those CDs are unobtainable, except perhaps used, on "Ebay" (or similar) where the recording artist and record company don't get paid, anyway.

The recording indistry has come to a point where it must adapt, or die. They could put kiosks in retail stores that will allow people to select and buy a CDR with MP3s burned onto it, or CD audio tracks. Every store, even convenience stores, could have the same selection as the largest imaginable, and best stocked music store. They'd just connect to a wireless server, download the appropriate songs, burn it onto a disc, spit it out.

On the internet, if you could be GUARANTEED to find the music track you wanted, and pay $0.50 out of a prepaid music account, and download it successfully in five minutes (assuming broadband connectivity), people would PAY. Flat out. Every time I go to a "buy music" site, it never, ever has what I went there to get.

Instead of the record corporations cooperating to build such a service and infrastructure to guarantee their future, they've chosen to cooperate in extortion** and terror to keep pushing an archaic form of music media that nobody wants anymore.

Sure, trading songs with other people is "stealing". I should be artificially inflating the value of some dork's Ebay offering to get something scratched up that I don't want to store, and maybe not get it at all, and wait half a month for it even if I do.


* A 60GB notebook drive consumes less physical space than ONE CD in its jewel case, and can comfortably hold the contents of thousands of CDs. There is a wide variety of personal MP3 players based on this technology. Add to that the selective content of ONLY the tracks you wanted, and it can basically hold the contents of a whole house, packed floor to ceiling with CD media, most of which contain one track you wanted, eight tracks you wouldn't listen to unless FORCED to, and a LOT of blank space. Now consider trying to find that one song on one disc you wanted to hear now. What room did you put it in? What's it buried under? Who knows?


**Actually, it would be better to make the RICO thing a class action suit against RIAA. Get everyone who's ever downloaded a song (and potentially at risk for RIAA lawsuit) to sign on. Seek damages (punative) against the RIAA of $150,000 per user, per track. Let's see how they like the same kind of extrortion they've been dishing out.

 

[LW]

Not a fine: a lawsuit to recover for stolen property.

I just wonder how exactly did they recover stolen property? When person X downloads a song Y, the song doesn't suddenly disappear from the server and neither does the recording company lose anything tanglible.

And unfortunately, they're in the right. No one forces you to d/l music off the Internet.

I've never used Napster, Gnutella, Kazaa, or any other file-sharing program. I've downloaded some songs from web-pages that either have been placed there by the artists themselves or that for some reason don't seem to fall under copyrights. Not all music in the internet is illegal.

Don't want to buy it? Then don't. But if you steal or copy it... you're stealing it.

If you copy it, you (or the person who put it available for copying) commit a copyright violation. Copyright violation is a crime but it is not a theft.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

The false assumption with illegal downloading is that the downloader would have bought the record if they could not have downloaded the album.

Why does it matter? Would you make the same argument about someone stealing a Ferrari if they would not have bought one if they couldn't have stolen it?

 

[LW]

Why does it matter? Would you make the same argument about someone stealing a Ferrari if they would not have bought one if they couldn't have stolen it?

If you steal a Ferrari, then its owner doesn't have a Ferrari anymore.

If you copy a record, then the holder of its copyrights still has the record.

That's the difference.

 

[Jaggy Bunnet]

If you steal a Ferrari, then its owner doesn't have a Ferrari anymore.

If you copy a record, then the holder of its copyrights still has the record.

That's the difference.

But the point wasn't that you were depriving the holder of something, it was that you wouldn't have bought it anyway so it was OK to steal it.

To follow the logic through, what about a loaf of bread - assume that any unsold loaves are thrown away at the end of the day and that the baker generally produces more than he sells (as the marginal production costs are low compared to the lost revenue/future business from running out). Are you saying it is OK to steal a loaf if you wouldn't have bought one because it would probably only end up being thrown away anyway (ie nobody is being deprived of anything)?

Or more topically, would it be wrong to attend every session of a convention, say The Amazing Meeting, without paying because you wouldn't have gone if you had been required to pay?

 

[LW]

But the point wasn't that you were depriving the holder of something, it was that you wouldn't have bought it anyway so it was OK to steal it.

No, that was not the point. Not at all. (And yet again, it would be a copyright violation, not a theft).

The point was that when the record companies claim that they lose $X billion because of illegal copying, that claim is invalid.

When the companies publish figures of their supposed losses, they suppose that every single person who copied the song would have bought it. That assumption is absurd.

If no-one had copied any music at all, the record companies would not have sold $X billion worth of more records.

Sure, there are people who probably would have bought the record instead of copying it, but that percentage would have been significantly smaller. I don't have any clue what that figure would have been. And furthermore, a small bit of those losses are compensated by people like me who occasionally buy a CD that they wouldn't have bought if they hadn't heard illegal mp3s. [In my particular case, this far I've bought 4 CDs just because I heard some of my friends play songs from them that they had downloaded from the internet. Edited to add: in the same timeframe I've bought about a 10 CDs in total, so ~40% of my CD buying is solely because of illegal mp3s.]

Note that this doesn't have anything to do about justifying downloads. In many jurisdictions it is illegal to download songs. And in practically all it is illegal to offer songs to download. And, in my opinion, this is how it should be. The content maker decides how to make it available.

This same invalid assumption of losses holds also for large software companies who claim to lose yearly another $Y billion because of illegal copying. If all software piracy stopped today, those companies wouldn't suddenly get $Y billion more money.

What annoys me most is that at least in several "piracy statistics" I've been counted among pirates and thus few thousands of dollars of that $Y billion have been laid on my consience. This because I buy my computers without an operating system and this automatically qualifies me as a pirate in the eyes of BSA. They think that it is absolutely inconceivable that someone might want to get a computer without Windows or MacOS, so obviously I pirate them and MS Office from somewhere. Yeah, right.