As the content industry grapples with
whether they should finally make peace with this new-fangled technology or continue arming their lawyers with thousands of cease-and-desist letters, it's difficult not to giggle at the old fogeys up in the boardroom. MP3s and digital videos have been around for over 10 years... time to update that business plan? Nah, let's kick and scream for a bit longer.
If you haven't been following the latest round of hilarious tribulations involving the RIAA, the MPAA, and the internet, you are missing out on some seriously great fun. Let's start with America's favorite past-time: lawsuits.
MPAA sues millionaire for allegedly downloading Meet the Fockers via Bit Torrent. Millionaire says nuh-uh, he already bought that stupid movie. MPAA says they'll forget about the whole thing if millionaire settles for $2500. Millionaire says f-u, I'm gonna shell out way more than that just to prove you wrong in court.
The RIAA, on the other hand, prefers to sue dead people, grandmas, and folks without computers for illegally downloading music. More recently, they've brought the smack down on their own customers: intimidating music fans who post lip-sync videos on the internet and threatening sites that host guitar tabs for pop songs. How dare you enjoy our music? How dare you. Clearly these unsanctioned activities must be stopped; Fergie is going to starve tonight because you posted a video on You Tube of your friends dancing along to "London Bridge" in your living room. I hope you're proud of yourself. The RIAA's latest PR flub involves a nastygram sent to the Astronomy Department at Penn State, who dared to have a professer named Peter Usher and the MP3 of an astronomer-produced a-capella song about gamma ray satellites on their server. The lethal combination of Usher + MP3 on any website clearly means some illegalism is going on. Thanks to Penn State, poor Usher had to get a second job to pay the bills.
For more on RIAA scare tactics, read the layperson's guide to filesharing lawsuits, posted on the Digital Music Weblog. Or go straight to the source, and check out the RIAA's own anti-downloading propaganda video. Weird Al has issued a musical rebuttal, but it's about as funny as those net neutrality songs.
Of course, the RIAA and MPAA can't hold up their noses to digital media forever. There have been a few promising developments on the digital video front recently, thanks to some TV networks who are warming up to the internet as well as the YouTube phenomenon. Fox will be selling TV shows and movies online, eventually using MySpace as a lucrative marketing platform to compete with other internet video stores and TV networks who have already joined the army of progress: Disney/ABC, CBS, iTunes, and Amazon.
Given the industry's reluctance to latch on to anything that is new and popular with the kids, I am still amazed that YouTube has not been shut down yet. In fact, it's thriving. Even though TV networks and the MPAA squirm at the idea that anyone can watch 10 full minutes of their programming for free, they're learning that this is a small price to pay for the huge amount of exposure the video-sharing site throws back at them. Visibility is worth something, and now NBC is even partnering with YouTube, and talks are underway with a few major record companies (Warner, EMI) to make music videos available on YouTube. Could this mark the beginning of the end of the RIAA's policy on sharing over the internet?
Perhaps, but you can bet they'll be looking for other ways to charge you twice for a record you already own... check out this NY Times review (requires login) of a computerless vinyl to CD converter: you can only feed this puppy "special" anti-piracy CD-Rs (they only allow one copy to be made), that happen to be a lot more expensive than regular CD-Rs (they have to be: the RIAA collects royalties from their sales! Wait, didn't you already pay for that record once?).
And don't expect the RIAA to stop its lawsuit rampage against file-sharers anytime soon. At least not until a judge calls them out for "spamigation."
If it was just a matter of "cease and desist letters" it wouldn't be so bad. That is the norm for copyright lawyers, but these characters don't act normally. In addition to 'ceasing and desisting' -- which most of the RIAA's victims are more than glad to do -- the RIAA's attack dogs insist on payments of $3750 and up. And if you don't pay up, they sue. And if you're innocent, they don't care, they will continue the lawsuit, take depositions of your entire family, and if that doesn't turn up a file sharer, then they want to conduct pretrial discovery into the identities and backgrounds of the neighbors' kids.
Thanks for an excellent article.
Best regards,
Ray
http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com
Posted by: Ray Beckerman | August 28, 2006 at 11:02 AM
If I were an astronomy professor, I'd be pretty ticked that some dude (who probably doesn't have a PhD, even in some lame-ass discipline like political science) was using my name to record crappy and then deceiving the youth of America who are probably thinking when they buy a CD from the non-PhD Usher that they'll get some real insights into the secrets of the universe.
Posted by: Listener Paul | August 28, 2006 at 05:46 PM
I bet Edgar is pretty mad too. The Gutenberg project has an interesting 'a capella' number available.
Posted by: Anon | August 29, 2006 at 03:51 AM
It is kinda, but its more scary to me than anything else. The RIAA and its cohorts (including the FCC) wield an unnatural amount of power, money and influence within the legislative branches of our government. Fortunately for us, they won't admit that it's a technical impossibility to control individuals' ability to copy or reproduce copyrighted material. Unless they enact legislation which would allow law enforcement to enter every single home and replace their computer with some new Orwellian computer that won't let you copy/record/duplicate media - then we're always going to have the means. If you can hear something, it can be recorded. If you can see something, it can be recorded. If you record something, then you can duplicate it or edit it and distribute it. I'm guessing all these rediculous fines and lawsuits are intended to SCARE us out of doing it ourselves. But its apparently not working.
Posted by: Steve PMX | September 01, 2006 at 01:29 PM
I'm a guitar teacher, and I post Guitar Chords and Tabs on my site. I believe that the more accessable music is to people, the more involved they will be in music generally--which means they'll buy more albums and go to more concerts, which is where the real money's at--not in selling tabs.
Rob
Posted by: Rob | October 03, 2006 at 12:06 AM
Maybe have a look at tabforge - it's a free online guitar bass & drum tab archive could be really useful to find the tablature you need ;)
Posted by: root | January 18, 2007 at 02:49 PM