Random noise, incoherent thoughts, whatever.
I just found a very interesting blog about the RIAA lawsuits. It’s run by two lawyers, who apparently think RIAA is abusing the law.
The blog documents and comments on active cases RIAA is litigating in the courts as well as other background information into the RIAA’s war on P2P downloads.
-TPP
The fine people of ZUG pull a couple of excellent pranks on the RIAA and the music industry peoples.
-TPP
A digital music research firm The Leading Question has released a study that concludes people who download pirated music online actually spend 4 times as much money buying legal downloads as people who do not download pirated music.
This comes as no surprise to anyone, who has been following RIAA’s war on music downloading.
-TPP
So, allofmp3.com, a Russian music download site, claims they’re legit and are paying royalties to what they say is the Russian authority that collects royalty payments for musicians.
Well, looks like Russian IFPI (International Federation of the Phonographic Industry) thought otherwise and asked the Moscow City Police Computer Crimes Division to investigate allofmp3.com. The police concluded their investigation earlier this month and are recommending the prosecutors charge allofmp3.com for criminal copyright infringement.
Let’s see what happens next. Will the operators pack their bags and skip town, will they just shut it down and play quiet or will they fight it.
It’s also interesting to see what the copyright stormtroopers in other countries will want to do with the customer list. I’m 100% sure the Russian IFPI will politely ask the Moscow City Police to confiscate the customer list and forget it at IFPI’s mailbox.
-TPP
The entertainment industry is big, and it’s powerful, but I never thought they ran the United States. Even when the DMCA was passed I didn’t think so. But today I read two news stories that make me wonder.
The first one is so absurd you really have to read it twice to believe it. It seems the FCC is claiming it has authority to regulate all instrumentalities, facilities, and apparatus “associated with the overall circuit of messages sent and received” via all interstate radio and wire communication. That, btw, includes personal computers, PVRs, and any other device that could receive digital TV signals now or in the future. FCC’s basis for this argument is that they have to do it to make HDTV adoption happen. This is why the FCC now thinks they can dictate what you can or, rather, can not do with your audiovisual gadgetry.
The second item comes straight from the lobbying arm of the RIAA and MPAA via your friendly entertainment industry representatives in the US Senate. It seems like there’s a new copyright bill in the books every week. This time it’s something called the Intellectual Property Protection Act (HR2391). Now, it has all the usual “share music or movies online and go to prison for the rest of your life” stuff all the other bills have, but this bill goes even further. It actually has the audacity to prohibit skipping commercials or other promotional announcements when recording movies for home viewing. At least they let you skip the commercials when viewing the recording though, for now.
-TPP
RIAA has claimed, for years now, that p2p networks and other online “pirate” channels are killing the music industry and causing the majority of the decline of music sales for the past few years.
The Economist article linked references an internal study conducted by one of the major record labels. The article goes on to say:
According to an internal study done by one of the majors, between two-thirds and three-quarters of the drop in sales in America had nothing to do with internet piracy. No-one knows how much weight to assign to each of the other explanations: rising physical CD piracy, shrinking retail space, competition from other media, and the quality of the music itself.
The article also suggests most of the problem is due to the overall lack of quality and creativity in today’s music, and the major publishers’ focus on producing mega-hits instead of creating long-lasting careers for their artists. There appears to be some support to this theory from the major music publishers themsevels, as the article demonstrates.
-TPP
According to the Newsday article, Orrin Hatch, Hollywood’s best buddy, has withdrawn the INDUCE Act after failed negotiations between consumer groups, technology companies, which both oppose the bill, and the proponents of the bill (RIAA, MPAA).
Let’s see what will Mr. Hatch cook up next. Hopefully he will not be re-elected and gets his promised post as an entertainment industry lobbyist. Funny how bribes^H^H^H^H^H^Hcampaign contributions work…
-TPP
This week I finally discovered two online music sites operating in Russia RIAA must be mad as hell about.
The sites in question are allofmp3.com and mp3search.ru. Downloads from either service have no DRM whatsoever.
allofmp3.com, operating since 2001, looks very impressive. They charge $.01 or $.02 / megabyte, depending on how you download the music. Their “killer app” is online encoding, which enables you to choose the encoding method (mp3, wma, ogg vorbis, musepack and aac), and the quality of the encoding. For some albums in their catalog they also offer lossless encoding enabling you to download exact copies of the audio CD, and burn the songs into an audio CD, instead of mp3 files.
Both appear to be operating entirely legally according to Russian copyright law, which dates back to the Soviet Union era. Since downloading copyrighted music for personal use is perfectly legal, it is legal to use these services even from within the United States. RIAA will, of course, tell you otherwise, but has so far been unsuccessful in shutting these services down. The law, for once, appears to be on the side of the consumer.
A great review of allofmp3.com is up on museekster.com. The review clarifies the legality of the service(s) quite well.
Up yours, RIAA scum.
-TPP
The people at Save Betamax are trying to organized a national call-in day on Tuesday Sept 14th. Spread the word and call your congress critter this Tuesday.
The INDUCE Act, for those of you who live under a rock :), is the piece of legislation written by the RIAA and MPAA lackies making illegal any device or act that could potentially be used for piracy. That would include writing about methods of piracy, supplying parts to digital music players, manufacturing mp3/wma/aac players, VCR players, DVD recorders, Tivo and anything else RIAA/MPAA thinks might fall under the proposed law.
-TPP