'ISPs don't work for the RIAA'

Innocent until proven guilty. What the RIAA wants to do is use the ISPs dime (IE. Your's mine, etc) to fund their legal work. They want to circumvent the courts and other legal authorities. This way they can set their own fines instead of a judge doing it.

Verizon can sell your name etc but it can't sell specific records such as what you download etc, that's private information that you never provided them with and never gave them permission to collect/release. It's like them monitoring your emails and then selling them to 3rd party

Good for you.And I'd say the same for you too. You want to prove damages to me? OK, quantify it. How did you arrive at your calculations? Are your methods flawed? etc. For all we know, maybe your music simply isn't "really" worth the price you set on it, and that's why people aren't buying it.

Sorry, but I'm a person of logic. You give me point A (piracy), and point B (loss in sales), and want me to conclude that A infers B, with no proof of what's happening inbetween...but merely hearsay and "gut feelings". I'm sorry, but facts are what sway my opinions, not hunches.

Have you ever even read through their site before?

Someone should stand up for fair use, and against racketeering hidden behind the curtain of civil lawsuits. They deal with many issues besides this one. It's time someplace with money said something - god knows there have been enough campaign contributions from the other side.

Putting that aside, the EFF has very little influence on such matters. You don't see any legislation moving in the opposite direction, or even stopping. Public awareness on the matter is relatively low outside of what they see on a news commercial. The EFF is small beans.

Every post you make on the matter seems to be from a viewpoint of an obsolete business model. If the RIAA and MPAA aren't begging people to share music and movies, I revoke my posting rights here. I don't usually believe that doing wrong to correct wrong is proper, but once things pass a certain point, you're stuck in a corner. If this is the only way to wake them up, by all means, I'll take it.

As I said before, and will say again, time to boycott the RIAA. Stop buying cd's and let them go bankrupt.

Rob

I see it differently. There are tons of reasons not to buy iTunes music.

a) 128k AAC = crap. Many agreed 20 years ago that 16/44.1 for digital wasn't enough, now 20 years later we're moving.. backward? What happened to high resolution digital formats? Nevermind 5.1, what happened to two channel audio that sounds better than a 25 year old studio tape machine?

b) Expensive. It costs nearly as much as the CD. Why bother?

c) AAC doesn't work on my portable. I can play FLAC, vorbis, WMA, and MP3, but not AAC. Use an open format.

I'd still download music for free regardless of any of these reasons because that is how I find music. Some people listen to their friend's music for free, some people listen to the radio for free, some people hear it in a club for free, and I download it for free - we all have different ways of sampling music for free to determine what we like(and would want to buy), and what is trash. My Alice In Chains discography on the floor is a reminder to me that usenet isn't the only place I shop at.

That has nothing to do with sales, so yes, you are wrong. I have over 40GB of music that I share, mostly all downloaded for free. I have no intention of ever buying any of that music. If I was not able to download for free, I still would not pay for it - I would stick to radio.

Welcome to Trollsville, your tour guide today will be TCH...

RIAA doesn't own the music business. If you stop buying cd's the record company's get screwed.

I know this is about ISPs and the RIAA but i just had to say something about DRM music. First of all, steve job is right, drm is a losing music protection measurement and needs to be done away with. The music that u buy from BOTH microsoft and itunes are sub par to a 192kbps mp3. That is what i use when i encode a cd to my computer. Also if u take that same song u put on ur ipod or mp3 player from either service and put it in ur car u can barely hear the bass and other sounds because it is so stripped down of music that it only good for a little pocket player. The last and most freaked up reason is that microsoft drm has to have licenses that need to be in place so u can play the music. Well i bought about 20 dollars worth of music and my computer got a virus one day. Couldn't get it out and had to reformat it and did not know about the licenses. Got ever thing back and running and i could not play my music i bought b/c i didn't have the licenses for it. Had every song backed up on a disc and could not play a single one. That really sucked and is why i started to download music. I was a good customer to microsoft and itunes but that changed everything.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation fights on the behalf of consumers for a great many things, digial privacy, to name but one. But dittoheads like yourself would never let anything inconvenient such as facts deter you from spouting off about that which have no clue.

The EFF is a bunch a scumbags IMNHO. They don't represent the people they represent unscrupulous Biz practices. they have no credibility with anyone.

You seriously need to wake up before you post. You sound like a lawyer for the corporate machine. Do you like having any personal rights? Well honest people do. This is the new era of McCarthyism here. Are you an illegal file trader or not?

What burns you more? People downloading music without paying for it, or the fact that the popular music artists, that you and those like you record, walk around with their fancy clothes, 20 cars, and multi-million dollar mansions living off those of us who make a modest living to pay the bills? Okay, so here's where you might (like the RIAA) tell me how 9 out of 10 artists aren't so successful and so we must pay $20 for a CD to support everyone on the label. Newsflash: I'm no interested in subsidizing the music industry. If you're gonna try to make it as an artist, it's your risk and not mine to finance.

I highly doubt every artist is like such. However, RIAA seems to have a terrible habit of picking the worst role models for anti-piracy and putting them on publications. Do I really want to hear Metalica play dress-up as "starving musicians"? Hell no.

I've played a lot of original music that people have enjoyed over the years. However, the music business has become so poor over the years that I'm actually thankful I never got signed. Chances are it would be a slavery contract where you're forced to give up publishing and tour for nothing to support their property.

I got a dayjob, and a lot of great mid-success artists I know still need a dayjob to be there for them when they get off tour.
So forgive me if I could give a rat's @ss when it comes to any labels who may lose a few bucks.

So that makes copyright infringement right?

What about the software makers who make a living off sales of shareware and get ripped off? I know no one cares about the profits of microsoft, but what about the small software companies?

It doesn't matter how much that person or company makes. Copyright infringement should be punished the same across the board. Doesn't matter if it is a small time person just trying to make ends meet or a large corporation making billions in sales.

Since you own the connection, you are responsible for what goes on over it.

Because they are never going to stop the filesharing lol.

We can throw out hypothetical ifs here, but if you are using this music on a regular basis, then in my mind it would be a lost sale. Same goes for software. If you download and install a piece of full version software, and use it for the better part of a year to build your website, clean your PC, or you play the game for 3 months, how is that not a lost sale?

Sorry, makes no sense to me.

My definition of a lost sale is pretty clear. You using what you downloaded for free? You using it often? Keeping it on hand for the future? If the answer is yes, then it has value to you and its a lost sale. If you download it once, listen to it, then delete it, I would not consider that a lost sale.

I think thats a pretty fair analysis.

Last I checked, this was a forum for discussion. If you don't want to participate, then click the red X on your browser. Don't go around labeling people just because they don't fall in line with your point of view.

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And thus you followed the procedures by copyright law to notify and pursue owners of such websites and publications on that matter? You had your work registered with the Copyright Office? Not sure I follow you here. There are plenty of protections for intellectual works.

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I agree. There are procedures to protect your intellectual works, which I have taken advantage of. I have been repayed in the past or my work has been removed from websites at my request. The good thing is that I have never had to get lawyers involved. Course, my work isn't something that gets traded via P2P.

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Before P2P you could tape a song from the radio and listen to it on a daily basis, wasn't that legal and did that spell a lost sale?

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Course not. In my mind though, you are paying for quality of a product when it comes to music. You aren't going to get a great quality if you record off of the radio. Which is the benefit of CDs. I am not going to get into the whole RIAA is crap argument because they do have their heads up their asses when it comes to digital distribution of their product. I will say this though, when it comes to movies, software, and so on, you didn't comment on any of those. What about the small bands who don't want their work on P2P? Who fights for them? What about the small software companies who make a shareware product and then find the full version of their product on P2P for a free download? Do you approve of those things?

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It is not that simple. It has already been shown in a news item recently that even connecting to say, a torrent tracker that is being watched over by MediaSentry will get your IP flagged as an illegal filetrader, even if you're not uploading/downloading. And lets not forget about the dead filetraders and other bogus lawsuits that the RIAA has filled. Someone takes your car without your knowledge and robs a bank. Would it be fair if you have to pay for that crime? An IP address is not a reliable identifier of an illegal filetrader. And besides, the ISP will hand over the personal info of an illegal filetrader as long as the RIAA follows due process.

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Which is why we need a neutral party to look over the findings and evaluate if there is a reason to go after them. I am talking someone separate from the **AA. If you would have read my post, you would have seen that I mentioned that more than a few times.

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And there are plenty that will do the work, I just don't see why we as taxpayers or the ISPs have to subsidized the cost of it. Let the RIAA/MPAA pay for it. Going by their inflated figures on loss due to piracy, their ROI will be almost immediate.

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With all the people who bitch about the wrongful suits, you would think they would want to see a "internet copyright protection" task force or some kind of check and balance. Oh well, its an idea nonetheless.

I disagree. There are enough ways someone can break into and use your computer/connection that this isn't the case, and should not be the case. Again, if someone breaks the glass in your car window and hotwires the car, you're not responsible for what they do with it.

Likewise, if someone cracks your WEP key, and installs back oriface (whatever the modern version is) and some "invisible" proxy software to use on your PC, I can't see how you should be responsible for that.

First off to clear things up, musicians make a lump sum off their record which is written into their contract. Its usually something retarded like $30-50G between the entire band (if were talking bands) for the album. Now take that and subtract the costs they record companies charge them for using their studio to create the album (they're charged by the hour). Then, if they want a fancy ass looking cd the record company will charge them for the extra costs involved there. (imagine George Steinbrenner charging his Yankee players, per hour, for using his equipment and stadium to play games)

Musicians make their money on tour and only see money from their record sales if they are big enough to carry weight in the industry and negotiate their record contract to specify so. Or if they are credited for writing their music they make money from radio airplay, tv performances, and any other place that plays their music in public. (Think about every restaurants you go to with music, they pay for that)

As far as the XXAA and their figures go. They obviously look at each download as a lost sale, which is quite possibly the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard of. To be considered a lost sale, you have to have money to buy the album in the first place.

There's a reason many artists encourage you to download their music. Because 95% of the cds i have bought have been because of the internet. the last 5 concerts I've gone to have been from hearing an artists songs through P2P. Regardless of peoples abuses, P2P is one more way to exchange knowledge and advertise your band.

Is it perfect? No, obviously not. But you don't see barnes and knobles, borders or your local library being pressured to hand over video surveillance and personal info for people sitting in their stores and reading their books without paying.

I used to work at best buy. You wouldn't believe the number of people coming in who paid us $$ to get itunes music back from their dying HD even though it was on the iPod, cause they couldn't just copy it back with iTunes.

Or the people who had a PC at home and at college, and wanted to buy and load music from both machines. They can't as far as I could tell, every time I hooked an iPod up to my test machine at BB, it would want to wipe the iPod and relock it to that machine.

This is not eaiser than a CD.

thank you for saying it before I did.

Sorry, but your mind set is twisted. A lost sale is one that would have been made if not for the piracy. I got software, games included, that I downloaded, used and never bought. Fact is, if I did not download them, I would not have bought them anyway and that is a fact, not a hypothetical. Now, there are certain games I have bought and never bothered to even try to download them, like the Battlefield series and the GTA series. Those were actual sales. If I had downloaded them instead, those could be considered lost sales since I definitely would have purchased if I could not have gotten them online.

I will never, ever, ever purchase a music CD because I have been ripped off too many times with CD's that have one good song and the rest is crap. Can I get my money back on those? No. Will they ever have a reasonable return policy to guarantee my satisfaction with their product? Probably not. Until they change their ways, I will not buy their products.

You do have a good point. That is why there should be a warning or two initiated, which is already being done for the most part. For multiple offenders, there should be some legal repercussions. After all, all you have to do is pull the plug.

There really is no way to police this effectively other than a search warrant which most people who infringe on copyright would hate to see. Imagine the people at home downloading and then the police show up with a search warrant to search your computer for copyrighted material. But I digress....

In this digital age, there has to be some form of enforcement against these kinds of crimes. Just because it can't be effectively policed or enforced doesn't mean it still isn't right. Seems to be that is what the argument is around here. Since it can't be policed, it should be ignored or allowed. That just shouldn't be the case.

But you will gladly pirate what you want which makes your arguement moot. You say you would never buy them, but you will gladly use them. You can say you would never have bought them, but yet you use them on a regular basis.

So around and around we go.

Once again, we are dealing with hypothetical ifs here and there is no answer because we can't change what is going on right now or the past for that matter. Looks like we can agree to disagree and move on. I have no problem doing that.

The small software makers who do not have the marketing capital to get their wares to the public normally benefit more from this model. In regards to shareware most of that software is easy to find without the use of P2P because the developers let most legit download sites post for them. Since shareware is mostly about donations or purchasing the full version P2P doesn't seem to affect them.

I did do a bit of software digging on P2P out of curiosity, and what I found is that most shareware offered is the free version. Not the full version. Granted there are hundreds of programs out there and I can no way check all of them, but at the same time some of the programs I decided to download. Sure enough that download had all the instructions and data available telling me where to donate or buy the upgrade. Either the file sharers took the shareware version or maybe some developers are seeding the P2P landscape themselves.

Another thing to note regarding the fear of software being traded. It's essentially just that. One shining example is a game that came out not too long ago called Galactic Civilizations II. The game was completely DRM free and could be completely loaded onto your computer without needing the CD to run the game. The developers specifically said they will not restrict their game and were very open in their supporting web site. It was the top selling software title it's first week out in many stores (not game title, software overall) and additional orders from stores like Best Buy, EB Games and Gamestop far exceeded expectations.

This is a small company (Stardock Systems) and they made these sales by word of mouth (and glowing reviews). In spite of the fact this game had to have been a treasure trove for freeloaders to just download since there was no DRM the game still became a major hit.

In this crazy "download for free" world there are still plenty of people who will spend money on a good product. File sharing is not the problem. As you know my stance on the try before you buy model for P2P makes it extremely useful to both consumers and artists. The mentality of not buying anything is the problem, and that has to be dealt with on each individual basis.