Music industry continues to fuck itself over

[Nick]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5305520.stm

With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off, the music business has set its sights on a new enemy on the internet - websites which transcribe pop songs into musical notation.

The guitar may be enjoying a comeback among schoolboys and dad rockers alike, but beginners hoping to strum along with their favourite bands are finding dissonance online.

Having seen off some of the biggest networks that enabled free downloading of songs over the net, the music business is now calling the tune for websites aimed at guitarists.

Music publishers in the US say the guitar "tab" sites illegally infringe songwriters' copyright, and have issued "take down" orders to some of the biggest.

How ridiculous, all these sites do is help musicians (omg even the ones who grow up to make record labels lots of money).

The music industry is so fucking out of touch with reality.

[Neost]

Personally I hate tabs.

However, I'm with Nick on the fact this is stupid. I guess next they'll be down at the local VFW wanting royalties every time five guys with a bit of talent get together to play a dance.

Or another thought. Maybe they'll expect royalties every time someone sits down with a guitar or other musical instrument and tries to figure out a song playing by ear.

greedy fucks.

[Sionistic]

With all the free ways of viewing guitar tabs online (includding many bands that provide them for free), how could they possibly claim posting tabs infringes on copyright laws?

Having seen off some of the biggest networks that enabled free downloading of songs over the net

I like this claim, considering there are many big networks still completely functional, includding limewire and bit-torrent

[Aslanna]

They're also going after site that provide lyrics... Which I could see as more 'copyright infringement' than someone transcribing a song by ear. Having said that both instances are dumb.

[Al]

I'm going to sue the RIAA for making music that sucks popular through millions of dollars in advertising. They are monopolizing the music business. What if I want to listen to frogs humping on the radio instead of "Ridin Dirty" or "Beverly Hills"? There isn't a frog humping radio station. Why not?

Unfortunately I only get 1 station where I work......

edit: And I think this tab thing is BS. You don't see Chevy going out and suing people for writing a book about how to fix a 350 engine. You don't see Microsoft suing people for writing books about Windows. Maybe that's what the defendants mean by "fair use".

[Siji]

With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off

I'm curious about this. If anything I would guess that illegal downloading of music is bigger than ever.

Personally, I haven't purchased a record or CD in a music store in more years that I can remember and swore I never would again. I have however, purchased CDs directly from unknown artists at shows. 99% of the time, the music is better than all of the worthless crap on the radio/tv.

[Winnow]

With the fight against illegal downloading of songs starting to pay off

I'm curious about this. If anything I would guess that illegal downloading of music is bigger than ever.

My Giganews account shows I'm on pace to transfer 225GB for the current 30 day time period although I'm just approaching 1TB of downloads after about 1.5 years so that's an unusual amount (think: 360 demos!). With 80 days retention and a good newsgroup index search engine, you can have any song you want, 99% of the time in 5-10 seconds. You may as well think of newgroups as an unlimited mp3 jukebox, make your playlists, and play your music directly from it. There are also plenty of "tab" groups/posts in the newsgroups so budding guitarists will survive.

Illegal downloading isn't going to be stopped until something major happens with the newsgroups. When that happens, pirating will go back to the fun days of seeking out temp .appz/warez folders on random servers that last a few days or hours and then are deleted. Until then, it's an individual moral decision that I get a chuckle out of watching people bicker about. There's always someone that downloads just a little more than you do so you can feel good about yourself and point fingers at "the other guy". I'm presently pointing my finger at some dude, who posted in a forum, that he is averaging 1.2TB/month downloads using giganews. Outrageous! Hanging's too good for'em! Thank god for all of those good christians that don't steal.

Another point that's typically missed is that all "pirating" isn't bad. Most people don't have unlimited budgets that they may use on media type entertainment. (mine is $200-250.00/month divided between music/movies/books/games which might be more than what a lot of non "pirates" spend...if everyone in just the U.S alone spent that much per month on music/movies/books/and games, those four media groups would each receive ~15 Billion per month. Note: worldwide, the movie industry made ~40 billion in 2001 so I think I'm doing my share) They buy what they can and then leech the rest to fill their entertainment needs for the month or pay period. An analogy would be "cream rises to the top". The consumer that can buy a certain amount each month is going to fine tune their purchases for the next month based on the entire purchased and pirated entertainment they viewed/listened to recently. In this manner, if we believe people overall have good taste, which is debatable, the best entertainment available that may have gone unseen otherwise, will have a better chance of being purchased and not lose out to the crappy stuff with the big advertising budgets.

...wow, what a load of crap! I sleep like a baby.

[Winnow]

Hmmm, how do you feel about your DVD's being tracked all the time by big brother?

DVD chips 'to kill illegal copying'

Embedded radio transmitter chips to track movie, music and software discs

Simon Burns in Taipei, vnunet.com 15 Sep 2006

DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios.

The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers' homes.

Home DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and refuse to play discs which are copied or played in the 'wrong' geographical region, the companies behind the technology expect.

"This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide," said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation.

Ritek is the world's largest DVD maker, and its U-Tech subsidiary will make the discs.

U-Tech and IPICO, the company behind the RFID chips used in the discs, announced today that production of the 'chipped' DVDs will begin at U-Tech's main plant in Taiwan.

U-Tech's global network of factories stamps out some 500 million pre-recorded DVDs and CDs a month for major movie studios, recording studios and video games companies.

After ironing out bugs in the manufacturing process, U-Tech will work with major movie studios on a large-scale test of an RFID-based supply chain management process at its manufacturing plant and distribution centre in Australia.

RFID readers will then be built-in to home DVD players to extend the anti-copying technology into homes as part of a digital rights management system.

U-Tech described this as the "real end game" for the chip-on-disc technology, which would "eliminate optical disc piracy in the entertainment and IT sectors" .

IPICO claims that its RFID tags can be read from at least six metres away, and at a rate of thousands of tags per minute. The passive chips require no battery, as they are powered by the energy in radio waves from the RFID reader.

"I have envisioned using RFID to improve product visibility and enhance security in the optical disc industry for some time," said Yeh.

"Launching the chip-on-disc system has made this dream a reality and holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide."

Gordon Westwater, president of IPICO, added: "[This is the] first step towards new international standards to safeguard optical media, and the subsequent adoption of the chip-on-disc concept as a global standard."

U-Tech Australia, where the project will undergo a large scale trial, did not reply today to vnunet.com's request for comment on the new embedded RFID chip process and the precise schedule for its rollout.

Press relations staff at U-Tech's office in Taiwan refused to provide more information about the technology.

[kyoukan]

There will always be lots of manufacturers that will make players without that technology in it.

[Akanae]

I think that I should be allowed to copy DVDs onto my computer hard drive and use them on any device I own. It's called fair use. What if my disc gets scratched? I shouldn't have to re-purchase the movie.

If they really start doing this I will most likely start boycotting DVDs.

[Markulas]

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/provid ... 3&GT1=8506

"We believe these new businesses are copyright infringers and owe us tens of millions of dollars,"

To add to the fire..

[Funkmasterr]

I am so close to never seeing another movie anywhere or purchasing any new music ever it's not even funny.

These people make so much money it's sick and they have the nuts to whine about losing money here and there.

I will never download another movie/song illegaly again as soon as there is a salary cap put on actors/musicians (I would say around 200k a year) and prices of cd's dvd's went down to about 3-6 dollars per like it should be.

But then they would try and say that there is no point for them to "work so hard" (lol) and the quality of media would go down the drain, which would be just fucking fine with me.

[Aslanna]

What's criminal is how little the artists actually receive from those $18 CDs.[/glow]

[Kaldaur]

So don't listen to major recording artists. There is so much music available from so many non-labels it's insane. The minute people stop buying their shit and fluffy pop chords, the sooner we'll move past this phase of music.

[Tyek]

Now they are going after media that actually is already paying them. They actually are asking congress to help them with it too.


lots of link on the XM page

http://www.xmradio.com/grassroots/

This is just one.


http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/ ... y-xm_x.htm

It's the same old song from a short-sighted industry


Ladies and gentlemen, there are some things you need to know — some things you need to be absolutely clear about because there are people out there trying to cloud the issues and convince you to give up your rights.
Last week the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued XM Satellite Radio. Why? Because of the Pioneer Inno XM2go portable XM receiver.

The Inno (and its cousin, the Samsung Helix) can receive satellite-radio shows and — and this is what has the RIAA throwing another tantrum —record them.

Of course, people have been recording music off the radio for decades. But this is digital, so the quality is much better than you get from recording an FM station to a cassette.

And the music industry hates digital anything — hates it with a deep, seething passion. (Oh, digital is great for professionals. It's the idea of anything digital in the hands of consumers the RIAA and its kin, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), can't stand.

So the RIAA is claiming because you can record your XM signal onto your Inno, that "induces" people to infringe on copyrights. Never mind the teeny-tiny fact that you can't get the music off the Inno without buying it.

See, XM has a partnership with Napster — the new, legal version. If you like a tune you hear, you can buy it. In fact, you have to buy it if you want to listen to it anywhere else.

But logic and reason never seem to be in the same room as the folks from the entertainment industry. And they so desperately want to remove digital equipment from the hands of consumers (or at least cripple it), they'll continue to act like bullies if they can't get their way. And they still don't get why more people are downloading music illegally than ever before.

Need to know

If you buy a CD, you have the right to burn a backup copy of it.

You have the right to "rip" it — that is, to copy the songs onto another device, such as an MP3 player so you can listen to them somewhere else, e.g., your car. Just because you buy your music on one medium doesn't mean you can't listen to it on another. That's the beauty of digital.

You have the right to lend your CD to a friend.

You have the right to burn a CD mix of your favorite songs.

You have the right — despite the best efforts of the MPAA — to record your favorite television shows to tape or TiVo or whatever.

You have the right, when you watch a recorded show, to fast forward past the commercials, despite what Jamie Kellner, chairman and CEO of Turner Broadcasting, says. ("Any time you skip a commercial … you're actually stealing the programming.")

You have the right to teach your TiVo to skip in 30-second increments.

Of course, just because you have the legal and ethical right to do all these things (and more) doesn't mean you'll have the ability.

The entertainment industry has been pushing hard — using the tired mantra of "stopping piracy" — to have technologies implemented that will strip you of these rights. It's working to cripple the devices you use to watch videos and listen to music so you can only use the content you buy the way they say you can, legal rights be damned.

And this is nothing new. The XM lawsuit is simply the next in a series of attacks on new technologies. And the entertainment industry hates new technologies.

If the suit fits…

In 1982, Jack Valenti, then head of the MPAA, testified on the evils of the VCR, which he claimed would ruin the movie industry. "While the Japanese are unable to duplicate the American films by a flank assault, they can destroy it by this video cassette recorder," he said.

Since then, the VCR has brought billions and billions in revenue to the movie industry.

The MPAA railed against the DVD. Ditto.

The RIAA is just as mind-numbingly foolish. It fought against old-fashioned home analog taping, against the original digital audio tapes, against CD burners, and against MP3 players.

Every new technology that allows users to enjoy their music, movies, or television has been met by the screaming fits of the RIAA or MPAA.

Yet all these things have resulted in billions of dollars in profit.

The pattern repeats over and over: new entertainment tech comes out; RIAA and/or MPAA throw a fit; the market ignores the tantrum and the technology goes mainstream; entertainment companies make billions because of it.

Despite having the lesson repeated time and again, these organizations just don't get it.

So now the target is XM Radio. It's digital, it's high quality, and the music industry can't control it. Ergo, the RIAA hates it.

XM Radio, however, is pushing back. In a letter published on its website, it made that clear.

"Consumers have enjoyed the right to tape off the air for their personal use for decades, from reel-to-reel and the cassette to the VCR and TiVo," it read. Then, "We will vigorously defend these radios in court and before Congress, and we expect to win."

There's a T-shirt out there: "Your failed business model is not my problem." It speaks the truth, except that the entertainment industry is making their business model everyone's problem.

Eventually, I think, the rope it's using to cling to the past is going to end up choking it. Good.

[kyoukan]

these record labels are just starving for new sources of revenue. they spend millions of dollars in marketing and promoting a new ashlee simpson album (while spending like 10 grand total on the band and techs and I hope a lot less on songwriters) and nobody buys it. the guys running her label blame downloaders and the internet because it is not like they are going to come out and blame crappy sales on the fact that they have released nothing but derivative bollocks for basically a decade.

any marketer with any fucking savvy knows that stuff like young and hot teenage girls imping their favorite music on youtube whoring it on myspace is the new way of getting the stuff out there. I mean jesus weeping christ, they are selling the shit to their peers and incorporating it into their culture AT OTHER PEOPLE'S EXPENSE! It's a fucking fantasy come true for these labels and their artists, but instead of embracing it and working with this new type of marketing, they try to grab a piece of that profit in a fucking courtroom.

that kind of shit isn't going to cut it anymore. it's tediously easy to build a mainstream image now, and artists don't need a big label to sell themselves to a fan base.

the backlash is just going to build and build until artists are simply sick of the way these labels run their business and fuck up their careers and relationships with their fans. a ton of artists (mostly older ones now but that will change) are already leaving their labels when their contracts run out and joining with smaller fan friendly distributors who let the artists market themselves. these labels have fuckloads of cash from ripping consumers off for the last 50 years, but eventually they will overspend themselves into obscurity.

[Markulas]

wow, you'd swear these companies have more people who have a degree in law than a degree in the arts, or business for that matter.

[Siji]

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=34523

Microsoft Media Player shreds your rights

No more backups, or Tivo

By Charlie Demerjian: Thursday 21 September 2006, 10:08

THINK DRM WAS bad already? Think I was joking when I said the plan was to start with barely tolerable incursions on your rights, then turn the thumbscrews? Welcome to Windows Media Player 11, and the rights get chipped away a lot more. Get used to the feeling, if you buy DRM infected media, you will only have this happen with increasing rapidity.

One of the problems with WiMP11 is licensing and backing it up. If you buy media with DRM infections, you can't move the files from PC to PC, or at least you can't and have them play on the new box. If you want the grand privilege of moving that content, you need to get the approval of the content mafia, sign your life away, and use the tools they give you. If you want to do it in other ways, you are either a lawbreaker or following the advice of J Allard. Wait, same thing.

So, in WiMP10, you just backed up your licenses, and stored them in a safe place. Buying DRM infections gets you a bunch of bits and a promise not to sue, but really nothing more. The content mafia will do anything in its power, from buying government to rootkitting you in order to protect those bits, and backing them up leaves a minor loophole while affording the user a whole lot of protection.

Guess which one wins, minor loophole or major consumer rights? Yes, WiMP11 will no longer allow you the privilege of backing up your licenses, they are tied to a single device, and if you lose it, you are really SOL. Remember that feeling I mentioned earlier? This is nothing less than a civil rights coup, and most people are dumb enough to let it happen.

Read the links, the entire page is scary as hell, but the licensing part takes the cake. "Windows Media Player 11 does not permit you to back up your media usage rights (previously known as licenses)", Wow, new terminology, old idea, you are a wallet with legs waiting to be raped. "The store might limit the number of times that you can restore your rights or limit the number of computers on which can use the songs or videos that you obtain from them. Some stores do not permit you to restore media usage rights at all." Translation, not our problem, and get bent, we got your cash.

But it gets worse. If you rip your own CDs, WiMP11 will take your rights away too. If the 'Copy protect music' option is turned on, well, I can't top their 1984 wording. "If the file is a song you ripped from a CD with the Copy protect music option turned on, you might be able to restore your usage rights by playing the file. You will be prompted to connect to a Microsoft Web page that explains how to restore your rights a limited number of times." This says to me it will keep track of your ripping externally, and remove your rights whether or not you ask it to. Can you think of a reason you would need to connect to MS for permission to play the songs you ripped from you own CDs? How long do you think it will be before a service pack, masquerading as a 'critical security patch' takes away the optional part of the 'copy protection'? Now do you understand why they have been testing the waters on WiMP phoning home? Think their firewall will stop it even if you ask?

Then when you go down on the page a bit, it goes on to show that it guts Tivo capabilities. After three days, it kills your recordings for you, how thoughtful of them. Going away for a week? Tough, your rights are inconvenient to their profits, so they have to go. "Recorded TV shows that are protected with media usage rights, such as some TV content recorded on premium channels, will not play back after 3 days when Windows Media Player 11 Beta 2 for Windows XP is installed on Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005. No known workaround to resolve this issue exists at this time." Workaround my *ss, this is wholesale rights removal by design.

What WiMP11 represents is one of the biggest thefts of your rights that I can think of. MS planned this, pushed the various pieces slowly, and this is the first big hammer to drop. Your rights, the promises they made, and anything else that gets in the way of the content mafia making yet more money gets thrown out. Why? Greed. Your rights? History. You were dumb enough to let it happen, don't say I didn't warn you.

[Zaelath]

That all looks like Microsucks idea the way it's written. I've never seen anything that uses WMP DRM that wasn't pr0n anyway...