RIAA has fricken lost their mind....

[Clark Kent]

RIAA has fricken lost their mind....
By BlueDragon1981 - Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:42:05 GMT
Originally Posted at: Nephrites Citadel
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They fined a single mother in Minnesota $220,000, because you know that is going to really help them get people to see that it is wrong to copy music. If they are going to handle it this way.... then I say pirate all the music you want and the RIAA can go to @#$$.


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Nephrites Citadel - SciFi/Fantasy/Anime and More!

 

[AceHBK]

RIAA has fricken lost their mind....
By BlueDragon1981 - Fri, 04 Jan 2008 01:42:05 GMT
Originally Posted at: Nephrites Citadel
====================

They fined a single mother in Minnesota $220,000, because you know that is going to really help them get people to see that it is wrong to copy music. If they are going to handle it this way.... then I say pirate all the music you want and the RIAA can go to @#$$.


Read More...


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Nephrites Citadel - SciFi/Fantasy/Anime and More!

I read about this the other day. I am too tired of the RIAA and the MPAA. It is nothing more than man vs. technology and sorry to say that is a war that man will never win.

It is amazing to see how far all this has come since the days of Napster. Sad thing is that I don't see some sort of resolution ever coming from this.
I am a firm believer in sharing stuff but it seems that they don't want people to do that or make copies of stuff theyhave legally paid for.

I remember as a kid buying a cassette and if a friend wanted it I would let them borrow it or get a blank tape and make a copy of it for them. With how the internet is now that is basically what people are still doing but now companies have a problem with it. Funny...artists feel that companies rob them of profit and then on the other hand companies feel that consumers rob them.

What makes me laugh is that they complain about movie piracy as well but if you go into blockbuster, as you rent your favorite movie you can also purchase blank dvd's. LOL.

MPAA and RIAA are trying to fight a losing battle. I guess some folks are determined to try and ice skate uphill.

 

[tellner]

And now they say that if you buy a CD and rip a copy for personal use on your own MP3 player you are making an "unauthorized copy" and could be sued or prosecuted.

Motley Fool just recommended against buying stock in the member firms. An industry which would rather litigate than innovate is a poor bet.

it's also taking exception to recordings on his computer that he copied from CDs he purchased, with the outlook that Howell is also liable for the "unauthorized copies" he made and placed on his PC. Although there's a lot of clarification going on over the Internet now -- pointing out that the RIAA can't specifically target ripping CDs for personal use, since that falls within "fair use" -- the RIAA hasn't lent much reason to give it the benefit of the doubt as a reasonable entity here lately.

...

As it stands, the industry already seems almost hell-bent on creating plenty of disgruntled customers who don't particularly want to do business with it anymore ... and then suing them for it.


As I've said before, a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.

UPDATE: Apropos... http://www.mycomicspage.com/feature/danwasserman/?date=20080102

 

[Andrew Green]

The RIAA business model died a few years back, they just have too much money to realise it yet.

But the CD is obsolete, record stores are dropping like flies and everyone just converts their CD's to .mp3's anyways.

But seriously, why are CD's still around? DVD's don't cost anymore, and hold 6x as much for the exact same size. They aren't rewritable, at least not in as useful of way as Flash memory. The music industry is the only thing keeping them alive.

Piracy will continue to be a problem for them because right now we are incapable of buying music in the format we want it in. We have to either buy a CD and rip it ourself, something I'm sure they'd like to stop us from doing. Or buy a crippled copy from iTunes or some other "approved" source that adds DRM technology and limits usefulness.

Piracy gives people a better product then they can get legally. How do you compete with that?

 

[Bob Hubbard]

Maybe thet's part of the reason for the increase in vinyl record sales.

The RIAA and MPAA are shooting themselves in the foot, hard.

2 interesting bits fromm Slashdot

Investors, "Beware" of Record Companies
Posted by kdawson on Thursday January 03, @10:02AM

"The Motley Fool investment Web site warns investors to beware of 'Sony, BMG, Warner Music Group, Vivendi Universal, and EMI.' In an article entitled 'We're All Thieves to the RIAA,' a Motley Fool columnist, referring to the RIAA's pronouncement in early December in Atlantic v. Howell, that the copies which Mr. Howell had ripped from his CDs to MP3s in a shared files folder on his computer were 'unauthorized,' writer Alyce Lomax said 'a good sign of a dying industry that investors might want to avoid is when it would rather litigate than innovate, signaling a potential destroyer of value.'"

and

RIAA Argues That MP3s From CDs Are Unauthorized
Posted by kdawson on Tue Dec 11, 2007 03:09 AM
"In an Arizona case against a defendant who has no legal representation, Atlantic v. Howell, the RIAA is now arguing — contrary to its lawyers' statements to the United States Supreme Court in 2005 MGM v. Grokster — that the defendant's ripping of personal MP3 copies onto his computer is a copyright infringement. At page 15 of its brief (PDF) it states the following: 'It is undisputed that Defendant possessed unauthorized copies... Virtually all of the sound recordings... are in the ".mp3" format for his and his wife's use... Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recordings into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies...'"

 

[crushing]

The sensational media did it again. It wasn't as obviously apparent as the atrocious 'Will Smith thinks Hitler was a good person' article, but the truth is coming out.

http://www.cio-today.com/news/RIAA-...g-After-All/story.xhtml?story_id=13300C81I5JE

It looks like the problem isn't with the ripping of CDs to MP3s for personal use, but the part where the defendent put those ripped MP3s into a Kazaa shared folder.

 

[Bob Hubbard]

They've been quietly working in the "ripping = theft" argument for a while. It goes in sync with their argument that copying a cd to tape for your own use is also illegal.

 

[tellner]

Second what Bob said. If you take a somewhat closer look at the article you'll see that they're going after him for the Kazaa sharing. But they are maintaining that it was also a violation to rip at all. It's their legal theory. They are pursuing it. And they have been doing so for some time.

 

[crushing]

Second what Bob said. If you take a somewhat closer look at the article you'll see that they're going after him for the Kazaa sharing. But they are maintaining that it was also a violation to rip at all. It's their legal theory. They are pursuing it. And they have been doing so for some time.

I undestand that they have been shredding well established Fair Use to pieces pretty much uninhibitted throughout the Clinton/Bush years, but news organizations having to publish 'cautious mea culpas' apologizing to the RIAA for screwing this story up makes the RIAA out to be more of a victim. Such apologies to those bottom feeders won't help us get back rights being signed away since 1998.