Posted on 06/04/2006 3:10:19 PM PDT by Star Traveler
I believe that these artists have decided to sell their wares in Russia, and that that's why allofmp3 can offer these digital files for sale (I may be wrong, however, but I think it's why some artists/albums are for sale and some are not). So, the artist has total control over this, actually. If it sucks, it's because they allowed it to be that way-- or blame their record companies.
Have you looked up nonsequitur?
LOL!
I think you clued me into this site a while back. I love music, well mostly when music was music, if you know what I mean. Well the site is great, and I DO pay for the service so I don't feel bad about the RIAA suffering at all. So far I have about 8GB downloaded with almost 1,800 songs.
They are incorrect. They only rule the congress and the senate.
"Except all the songs are in Russian!"
"Just kidding."
This is akin to saying that selling the book rights means you have to give the movie rights away because its a different medium. The point in calling it theft is that Russia's scheme is out of line from other types of copyright protection.
You are right in that they are distinct forms of distribution: the recent Apple Corps vs. Apple Computer is very illustrative of the differences. However, modern intellectual property/copyright law broadly recognizes these points and grants protection to the rights holding parties--creators, publishers, etc.
At first blush the Russian scheme seems to contravene this trend. While I am not a fan of the heavyhanded and outright illegal tactics of the RIAA, they have a point in this case. Registering to sell a CD or for radio play in Moscow shouldn't mean that the mp3s can be given away in St. Petersburg. A CD is just digital information anyway. The radio stations play most of their music off a CD, so its digital there too. It's all data now.
I think of this in terms of the way China for years wouldn't recognize software copyrights. This lead to massive piracy. Then China enacted but didn't enforce copyright law. Still massive piracy. Then China started cracking down. Still piracy, but the scale is much smaller.
Too bad the RIAA can't figure out how to use this as a marketing opportunity like Microsoft did with Chinese and Indian piracy. Microsoft would never have been on 95% of Chinese computers if they had to rely on sales/bundling alone. With piracy spreading the original system loads, they then got millions of customers who now pay for upgrades. And they cry all the way to the bank about how they are losing billions because of the piracy.
Who knows, maybe the RIAA is doing the same thing with this allofmymp3.com thing. I wouldn't put it past them.
You said -- "I think you clued me into this site a while back. I love music, well mostly when music was music, if you know what I mean. Well the site is great, and I DO pay for the service so I don't feel bad about the RIAA suffering at all. So far I have about 8GB downloaded with almost 1,800 songs."
Well..., you've beat me. I've actually be fairly lax in downloading things. I guess I should get more dedicated to downloading a bunch of songs and albums -- because it looks like the RIAA is going to try to enforce its "globalist" policies over there in Russia, too (have to go to China, after that...).
And, yes..., it is *one day* going to come to the point where the "globalists" have finally defeated all "national sovereignty" (including the United States) and there will be finall world-wide control over all "buying and selling" (globalism to the max) and everything else. And that's the point at which the Antichrist steps into the picture. I would say we're not too far away from that. That's what I can see from what the Bible says of these times.
In the meantime, download those songs. I'll have to catch up to you.
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "This is akin to saying that selling the book rights means you have to give the movie rights away because its a different medium. The point in calling it theft is that Russia's scheme is out of line from other types of copyright protection."
Very simply -- if the RIAA would simply sell songs for 5 cents a song, have varied formats to choose from, no DRM that prevents transferring songs to different machines -- people would go crazy buying songs from them (or their licensed agents).
It's already been proven (by AllofMP3) that people *will pay* for songs -- if -- they are sold "properly" (as I outlined up above). A *lot of people* are already buying songs in this manner. There is a *big market* out there for buying songs this way -- and *not stealing them*.
HOWEVER, since RIAA is such a greedy organization and doesn't care about the consumer, they will continually try to steal money from the consumer -- instead of fairly pricing music and providing it in varied formats and with the ability to be moved around to different equipment that the consumer has.
Regards,
Star Traveler
Forget all this $$ talk, can someone direct me to a site where I can share music with my peers?
Our problem here is that I agree with you that the RIAA is hurting their clients' business for the long run. But what you propose is the same as trying to tell a pimp that if his 'hos charged less, they would get more business.
I would love to see less restrictive DRM and cheaper songs. I might actually buy an iPod and start downloading instead of still sticking to CDs--I still have vinyl and 8 tracks in the closet. Of course, all I end up doing is buying the same thing over again in the new format. How many formats of Hotel California or China Grove do I need?
Did they really make that poster? That's a god-awful poster, for sure...
Regards,
Star Traveler
You said -- "What part are you having trouble with?"
The part that they don't do that now. And secondly, the free market *obviously* shows that lower prices are what the public wants (supply and demand, ya know...) -- and thus whoever is setting the prices now (not the artists, but the big business interests) are *overpricing* these things -- from greed.
We can see exactly what the "free market" would prices these songs at -- by the overwhelming success of allofmp3.com. It's a perfect example of free market pricing.
And, Steve Jobs said (with the *legal iTunes in this country) that the industry execs *are greedy*. They wanted to increase the prices of iTunes to two and three times the present cost.
I would totally agree, that they are greedy.
Regards,
Star Traveler
More and more artists are keeping their own songs on a myspace website for download, etc. and cutting out the middle man, aka the agent, altogether.
Prince has been a leader in recognizing the problem of musicians giving away too much to the record labels. To that end, he has a comprehensive website with exclusive downloads for a subscription price. Moreover, he has total artistic control and ONLY uses the labels for distribution.
But he's one of the only ones I've seen deal with this. If an artist can maintain control over his music and then get's a price per copy for distribution and leaves the distribution to the record label, when sites like allofmp3.com, which I now am a member, hurt not the artist but the distribution.
It's time for musicians to change the business model because the industry is not doing it and will sink as a result.
Americans did the same thing to British authors for many decades, and vice-versa. Lord of the Rings was published in the U.S. without paying royalties.
Question:
If Russia prints 100,000 copies of Ann Coulter's latest book and sells them for $3.00 plus shipping to US customers, is that ok?
IMHO downloading pirated music is the same as receiving stolen goods and that's a crime.
Now I don't know if this Russian site has legally obtained the mp3 files or not. If they haven't, then anyone who downloads from them deserves a visit from the Feds for criminal theft.
RIAA is an agent for performing artists. Useless as much of what's recorded is, artists have a right to expect that their product won't be stolen -- just as an author has a right to expect some crook with a copier won't rip him off.
Railing against capitalist big business is a convenient justification for theft, it seems.
Whatcha gonna do when they come for YOU?
The Russians are not buying one CD from the US and copying it and distributing it. They're adhering to the Russian laws on the distribution of the content.
Their business model is to charge $10 for 500 MB of downloads.
If the RIAA really wants to stop it, they can work with US artists to stop any distribution to Russia.
Is the Russian site paying royalties for each download by a customer?
Do they have a contractual right to redistribute the music globally and over the internet?
I don't know about this site -- I only remember this same discussion over Napster before it was shut down. I heard all kinds of arguments from people that there was a "right" to redistribute music. Of course, there isn't.
I still wonder if people think that copying books and selling them without payment of royalties to authors is OK.
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