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There hasn't been a single anti-RIAA topic in the history of CoN? I'm quite surprised.

There are a ton of reasons to hate the RIAA. Sure they have a nice sounding motive to what they do, they're trying to stop copyright infringement. But that's only what they say they're doing on the surface. They have long tried to shut down media in which independent people can express themselves just because it can be used for infringement. Also, their methods used to curb infringement are just downright unfair and probably illegal. What do they do? Well, they do exactly what we're trying to stop the government from doing: spying on you! That's right, they have companies such as MediaSentry to spy on computer users to find out what they're downloading. And when they find someone, it's always a computer generated lawsuit. They don't know who they're suing, only a computer, which is complete with its flaws, does.

They do price fixing schemes and not a cent of extra money goes to the artists (hell, the artists only make a small fraction of what the royalties are. Most of the royalties go to the companies themselves.

Copyright law is meant to be a shield, not a sword, and the RIAA is using it as a sword to bully people.

They also claim that there's no such thing as fair use. What a fib. -CSM

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And more important than the whole downloading thing:

I remember the day that I went to get tabs for an Incubus song that I really liked, and went to my favorite guitar/bass tab website, and got the message: "We're sorry, due to current legal debate about music copywright infringement, the tab archive is currently unavailable."

So I went ahead and read some of the RIAA crap they posted about even if someone unrelated can pick out the pattern/notes to a song, and then post these for other people to read, regargless of how bad the translation may be, it's still an infringement on use of mental property. (or whatever the hell they call it) I'm not eloquent enough to remember the words I mean, you know what i'm saying.

That burned me good, I could've cared less about the music download thing, cuz some stopped, but there was always someone else you could download from. The tabs on the other hand, got shut down on all fronts at once.

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If internal struggles were as enjoyable and glamorous as the self conflicted wars within video game characters, we would all be statues, reveling in perpetual self war. -Me

Play me on Rock Band 2, GH-WT, or any other Xbox GH!
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^That's actually even worse. What's next? Singing a song in your head is a copyright violation?

I don't get it. How does playing a song on a guitar or singing a song to your friends constitute infringement? It doesn't take away from a record companies profits.

Especially because... what if a band releases tabs to their songs on a site like that? -CSM

This post has been edited by Crazyswordsman on 2nd March 2007 15:06

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Well, I actually like buying the physical CDs with real money, so the RIAA isn't really something that's ever bothered me. Of course, I'd like more money to go the the artist, but I figure they're probably already rolling in dough anyway.

Oh, and www.ultimate-guitar.com. Tabs right there.

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"We're not tools of the government or anyone else. Fighting... fighting was the only thing I was ever good at, but at least I always fought for what I believed in." - Frank Yeager (a.k.a. Grey Fox)

Time to take action against them if they bother you that much. And if their spying is illegal, well, you've got them.
And if they manage to wriggle out of it somehow at court, just tell Bush they are hiding weapons of mass destruction and he'll launch a crusade against them. Sorted.

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'Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers.'

The problem I have with the RIAA is that they've accumulated so much political clout that they can pretty much do whatever they want. Downloading music is illegal, fine. But does a hundred thousand dollar fine really seem in line with that crime?

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Veni, vidi, dormivi.

Open Note to RIAA:

Piss off.

I just stole music. I'm going to steal more, then I'm gonna probably steal more. Too bad for you. I don't ever pay for music.

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If you've been mod-o-fied,
It's an illusion, and you're in-between.
Don't you be tarot-fied,
It's just alot of nothing, so what can it mean?
~Frank Zappa

Sins exist only for people who are on the Way or approaching the Way

Dear RIAA:

I agree with MogMaster. I use torrents, and guess what: no one is hurt.

Love,
Your mom

I think a lot of laws are ridiculous, and the RIAA doesn't escape my scrutiny.

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FFIII
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FFVI
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FFIX
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Chrono Trigger
Dragon Quest 8
Dragon Quest 11
Super Mario RPG

According to the RIAA, pirates are worse than pedophiles. -CSM

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I've pirated music constantly but that doesn't mean I don't support artists. Normally, if the songs I download really appeal to me, I'll go out and buy the cd. If that sounds good to me, I'll look more into the band and check out earlier material, b-sides and live recordings and get into all that too, so by extent, "music pirating" has only really made me spend even MORE money towards music on considerably more artists, especially ones that I would've never heard or discovered without the use of the internet.

If the RIAA has a problem with that, hey, fine. They can piss and moan all they like about what people do, but so long as the money they get off suing people stays in their pockets rather than going towards the artists they're supposedly trying to protect, then I'll consider myself more in the right than they are.

As a musician myself, I love the fact that people can actually go onto things like limewire and download my music, we even put our songs on our myspace up for download ourselves for anyone who likes them to have. They might not turn around and buy our demo cd, or later, our album, but hell, they'll certainly buy our merch and come to our shows which puts more money directly in the artist's pocket than cd sales.

This post has been edited by Dragon_Fire on 2nd March 2007 23:26

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Okay, but there was a goat!

The RIAA doesn't really bother me. The way I figure it is, thousands, maybe millions of Americans download music. How are they going to catch us all? Sure, they might catch some, but I don't really worry about it. I think the fine you can get (yes, I do think it's a bit harsh) is just out to scare most people. I almost talked my grandma into downloading music for herself (she always makes me do it ¬.¬), but she's scared of the RIAA and their fines.

First post in some time...

How dare they try to stop people from stealing?

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Hey, put the cellphone down for a while
In the night there is something wild
Can you hear it breathing?
And hey, put the laptop down for a while
In the night there is something wild
I feel it, it's leaving me

I love the RIAA. I also love George Bush. And Jesus.

Downloading music is not at all a victim-less crime. In fact, it pretty much is downright stealing. Were I a professional musician, I'd have every right to be against it.

Here's what will really blow your mind: Companies really are out to take all your money because they are in fact still companies and not happy-fun-give-away-love trains.

And yes, I have over 100 gigs of pirated content, but at least I'm not trying to justify my illegal activity. In fact, it makes me feel way hardcore

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I find your lack of faith disturbing...

I download music, realize it's illegal, and am aware of the consequences. However, I'm also aware of things like privacy. The comparison of a sword and the RIAA is pretty agreeable. The RIAA, as a organization, goes beyond the legal realm to target people they suspect of illegally downloading music. That's obvious from their lawsuit with Verizon back in 2002-2004. But yeah, I have maybe 12 songs on my computer right now that I've downloaded (so much, I know), the RIAA doesn't bother me in the slightest.



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"Space for Rent"

The idea that digital piracy is equivalent to theft is complete nonsense.

If you steal an apple from a shop, two things definitely happen:

1. You gain an apple for free.
2. The shop loses an apple, and can no longer retrieve the money it cost to buy it in, nor make any profit.

You might also argue that that shop, or another shop, loses another chunk of profit because you would've bought the apple otherwise. Maybe. But why did you steal it? I can think of numerous reasons that aren't "I was going to buy the apple but I'd rather have it free", and don't involve buying the apple as an alternative if stealing it is impossible or impractical.

Nevertheless, the shop is obviously the victim of this theft and loses money.

Now let's download a song illegally.

1. You gain a song for free.
2. ...

The source doesn't have any fewer CDs, the song you downloaded remains on the source server. So it's not the same thing. If you want a physical equivalent, it would be going into the shop with some kind of fruit cloning machine, making a new apple and walking off with it. (That'd be pretty handy for the third world, wouldn't it? Someone should invent that.)

You still have the "might also argue" paragraph from before, and it probably is more likely that the downloader would've bought a CD (or a legal download) instead of downloading, than the equivalent would be in the apple case - this is where the equation to theft comes in. However, I can guarantee you that for the very small amounts of music I've downloaded illegally in the past, I would never have bought a CD (except for a few songs where I later did, just because of having listened to downloaded songs - but I digress). In the modern world, I might've been persuaded to buy them cheaply as individual tracks for download, but legal downloads weren't on the table then, and besides, the restrictive DRM that is added by most online stores turns me off that too. I listen to music on my phone, and it only plays standard MP3s. I'm not buying a new device just to listen to stuff I bought.

And if I didn't buy the CD - the same number of CDs still went to press. They don't have any less and they will probably all sell - they wouldn't have sold any more if I didn't download. I find it hard to argue that that's not a victimless crime when nobody would be any the wiser, stock or profit wise, if I didn't do it.

Is it theft? No. It's copyright infringement, and the law recognises that fact. It's still illegal, and it's still highly immoral too, for the most part, and in many cases, it still costs people money, but it doesn't always have the same guaranteed impact as theft, and it's important to keep that distinction, in my opinion. In particular, it's a fallacy to equate every downloaded song (or game, or application, for that matter) to a lost sale, which renders any figures produced on loss of profit irrelevant.

As for hating the RIAA - yeah, of course it's perfectly fair that they try to stop piracy and make back the money they would have lost to illegal downloads. What people rightly object to is the incredibly disproportionate fines imposed by them (claimed to be around 1,071 times the wholesale price of a song), apparently to keep within the realm of "summary judgement" if I understand correctly, the propaganda that this is all in the name of paying the artists for their work, when in reality they think they're paying artists too much, and their habit of trying to have cases dismissed without prejudice when they realise they messed up to avoid awarding legal fees or legally admitting any wrongdoing - quite apart from the fact that this entire process of filing John Doe subpoenas is pretty unreliable and makes no discrimination billionaires and paupers (am I a bad capitalist for thinking that that there should be some?) But I suppose they're OK really - look at the amazing discounts they give us on CDs!

The RIAA essentially aims to protect a status quo that should be made redundant by the digital age and isn't at all happy about it, if you ask me. (And no, I'm still not saying it's wrong to make a business and profits out of music sales or that it's right to pirate it.)

This post has been edited by Tiddles on 3rd March 2007 10:38

There's a fine line between rightfully pursuing wrongdoers and going overboard with it such that they become unjustified bullies.

I think they've crossed it.

And for ye D&D enthusiasts, the D&D way of putting it: They get a -20 to my possibly liking them, due to their using money as a threatening weapon, and they additionally get a -8 due to their very improper use of clout. On top of that, -10 for not being fair to those who deserve the money (the artists).

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Quote (Crazyswordsman @ 2nd March 2007 16:54)

According to the RIAA, pirates are worse than pedophiles. -CSM

Yes, of course that's the case according to the RIAA. Pirates of music potentially have an impact on their business. Paedophiles don't. Therefore, it's an obvious statement for them to make, assuming they actually made it and it's not just a conclusion some fourteen-year-old "rebel" came up with out of "hatred" and "rebellion" against the "man." Pseudo-pithy statements like this mean nothing and really just make well-thought-out arguments against the RIAA's actions lose their effectiveness.

Now, beyond that one post:
I don't hate the RIAA any more than any other organization that is trying to make a buck. I don't like the fact that they are doing it on the backs of the artists, and were I an artist I would probably be looking very hard at learning the digital distribution process for myself and attempting to cut out the major labels anyway; I think most aficionados of modern music can agree that the best music coming out is mostly not from Columbia or Capitol anyway.

The bottom line is that the RIAA does have the right to prosecute these cases. If they were doing it in a more respectable way, the only people who would argue that point would be the insane or stupid. The problem is not WHAT the RIAA does, but HOW the RIAA does it. And people who can't make that distinction don't deserve to be the ones putting up the fight.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Quote (Crazyswordsman @ 2nd March 2007 01:07)

There hasn't been a single anti-RIAA topic in the history of CoN? I'm quite surprised.

I did: http://www.cavesofnarshe.com/forums/ipb/in...ic=1671&hl=riaa


And Tiddles used that comparison there as well. It's a good one by the way, definitely put things in perspective for me at the time.


The RIAA is a joke. I have no problem with any artists (besides Metallica ), but the RIAA makes me pretty mad.

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The clouds ran away, opened up the sky
And one by one I watched every constellation die
And there I was frozen, standing in my backyard
Face to face, eye to eye, staring at the last star
I should've known, walked all the way home
To find that she wasn't here, I'm still all alone

-Atmosphere "Always Coming Back Home to You"

Just to let y'all know, since this is RIAA-related, and an additional reason to hate them:

Quote ( http://www.kurthanson.com/archive/news/030207/index.shtml )

Webcast royalty rate decision announced

BY DANIEL MCSWAIN

The Copyright Royalty Board (CRB) has announced its decision on Internet radio royalty rates, rejecting all of the arguments made by Webcasters and instead adopting the "per play" rate proposal put forth by SoundExchange(a digital music fee collection body created by the RIAA).

RAIN has learned the rates that the Board has decided on, effective retroactively through the beginning of 2006. They are as follows:

2006 $.0008 per performance
2007 $.0011 per performance
2008 $.0014 per performance
2009 $.0018 per performance
2010 $.0019 per performance

A "performance" is defined as the streaming of one song to one listener; thus a station that has an average audience of 500 listeners racks up 500 "performances" for each song it plays.

The minimum fee is $500 per channel per year.  There is no clear definition of what a 'channel' is for services that make up individualized playlists for listeners.

For noncommercial webcasters, the fee will be $500 per channel, for up to 159,140 ATH (aggregate tuning hours) per month.  They would pay the commercial rate for all transmissions above that number.

That's just a snippet.

Quote (RAIN Analysis)

Because a typical Internet radio station plays about 16 songs an hour, that's a royalty Kurt Hansonobligation in 2006 of about 1.28 cents per listener-hour.

In 2006, a well-run Internet radio station might have been able to sell two radio spots an hour at a $3 net CPM (cost-per-thousand), which would add up to .6 cents per listener-hour.

Even adding in ancillary revenues from occasional video gateway ads, banner ads on the website, and so forth, total revenues per listener-hour would only be in the 1.0 to 1.2 cents per listener-hour range.

That math suggests that the royalty rate decision — for the performance alone, not even including composers' royalties! — is in the in the ballpark of 100% or more of total revenues. —KH

The RIAA has finally, formally, officially, made it onto my list of political enemies.

This post has been edited by Glenn Magus Harvey on 7th March 2007 05:00

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Check the "What games are you playing at the moment?" thread for updates on what I've been playing.

You can find me on the Fediverse! I use Mastodon, where I am @[email protected] ( https://sakurajima.moe/@glennmagusharvey )