anti-piracy nuts are an unbalanced lot
Jun. 20th, 2003 11:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
miriam_eYou would think Senator Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee would be a smart person. Well, he might be smart in some sense, but he seems somewhat retarded in another. He is so fired up about the online file-sharing debate he is actually promoting the idea of destroying people's computers remotely.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6559-2003Jun17.html
Yeah, right. That will really help! Did you read about the nasty cease-and-desist letters threatening legal action that were erroneously sent out by the music industry recently to a whole lot of people who had nothing to do with filesharing? I can just see a future scenario where the music industry nutters set loose some vicious worm that destroys computers, only to find that it is running rampant, targetting the wrong people, and everybody is powerless to stop it.
Another scenario is where pirates so affected (whose activities are really largely benign) target the music industry systems in retaliation. If the music industry wants to start a war then I am sure that is just what they will get.
There have been studies that show that people who share the most mp3s are also the biggest buyers of CDs. There is plenty of evidence to show that online piracy is not having any negative effect on CD sales, and some evidence that it actually acts as free advertising.
The music industry is its own worst enemy. They are pissing off their own customers by continually attacking them while dragging their feet about introducing beneficial new technology. At the other end, they bind their artists with excessively restrictive and controlling contracts while delivering very little of value, so that many artists are now starting their own internet-based music businesses, taking CD orders from home and mailing them to customers rather than copping the big bills from the industry. Music industry fat-cats take whopping salaries and pay peanuts to the musicians upon whose backs they ride. Many musicians make nothing from the industry which purports to protect them. Live shows are their only hope of an income.
The first thing I do when I buy a CD is rip it. I prefer to play mp3s than CDs... actually I've come to prefer Ogg-Vorbis format over mp3 (open source, no licensing, better quality, smaller files). I've been trying to work out a way to pay musicians directly for downloaded music without risking being busted for downloading it. I figure if I pay the musician more than what the record company pays then we both win. I believe artists generally get about $1 per CD in Australia (about 50 cents in US). If I pay maybe $1 per song, depending on how much I like it, then I reward my favorite artists while by-passing the nasty music industry.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6559-2003Jun17.html
Yeah, right. That will really help! Did you read about the nasty cease-and-desist letters threatening legal action that were erroneously sent out by the music industry recently to a whole lot of people who had nothing to do with filesharing? I can just see a future scenario where the music industry nutters set loose some vicious worm that destroys computers, only to find that it is running rampant, targetting the wrong people, and everybody is powerless to stop it.
Another scenario is where pirates so affected (whose activities are really largely benign) target the music industry systems in retaliation. If the music industry wants to start a war then I am sure that is just what they will get.
There have been studies that show that people who share the most mp3s are also the biggest buyers of CDs. There is plenty of evidence to show that online piracy is not having any negative effect on CD sales, and some evidence that it actually acts as free advertising.
The music industry is its own worst enemy. They are pissing off their own customers by continually attacking them while dragging their feet about introducing beneficial new technology. At the other end, they bind their artists with excessively restrictive and controlling contracts while delivering very little of value, so that many artists are now starting their own internet-based music businesses, taking CD orders from home and mailing them to customers rather than copping the big bills from the industry. Music industry fat-cats take whopping salaries and pay peanuts to the musicians upon whose backs they ride. Many musicians make nothing from the industry which purports to protect them. Live shows are their only hope of an income.
The first thing I do when I buy a CD is rip it. I prefer to play mp3s than CDs... actually I've come to prefer Ogg-Vorbis format over mp3 (open source, no licensing, better quality, smaller files). I've been trying to work out a way to pay musicians directly for downloaded music without risking being busted for downloading it. I figure if I pay the musician more than what the record company pays then we both win. I believe artists generally get about $1 per CD in Australia (about 50 cents in US). If I pay maybe $1 per song, depending on how much I like it, then I reward my favorite artists while by-passing the nasty music industry.
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 07:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 07:56 pm (UTC)I think he is mostly ruining his own reputation.
However some music industry execs have been doing battle lately with peer-to-peer and using weird tactics. They've been uploading fake music files and there are rumors of viruses masquerading as music files (I don't believe that though). They've also been forcing the pirated files to download really slowly, thus blocking other users from accessing them.
Apparently Madonna upset a lot of people recently by putting some fake versions of her songs in fileshare systems containing her swearing at and abusing filesharers instead. Some users retaliated by breaking into her website and putting abuse all over it.
And Metallica, who spearheaded the move against mp3s has found that there is a backlash against them now amongst the very people they want to buy their latest offerings.
Who knows what depths of stupidity people will sink to... after all, perfectly "normal" people did burn other ordinary people alive as witches not very long ago. (Hell! Imagine what it must have felt like to burn to death!) This is very little biccies compared to that.
Re:
Date: 2003-06-19 08:07 pm (UTC)On the one hand I don't get what the fuss is about really, as we used to just copy each other's albums to cassette anyway when I was a kid. On the other hand that took effort and organisation, whereas with the net I can grab buckets of stuff while I sleep. And on the other hand again, there's conflicting data as to how badly filesharing is affecting the industry (or if it's affecting it at all).
RE people - oh yeah. In spades.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 08:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-19 08:47 pm (UTC)"They're using our code," Woolley said Wednesday. "We've had no contact with them. They are in breach of our licensing terms."
When contacted Thursday, Woolley said the company that maintains the senator's site had e-mailed Milonic to begin the registration process. Woolley said the code added to Hatch's site after the issue came to light met some -- but not all -- of Milonic's licensing requirements.
Before the site was updated, the source code on Hatch's site contained the line: "* i am the license for the menu (duh) *"
Woolley said he had no idea where the line came from -- it has nothing to do with him, and he hadn't seen it on other websites that use his menu system.
"It looks like it's trying to cover something up, as though they got a license," he said.
A spokesman in Hatch's office on Wednesday responded, "That's ironic" before declining to put Wired News in contact with the site's webmaster.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-20 01:58 am (UTC)Ain't that always the way, though. Those that cry "foul!" the loudest are often the foulest of them all.
no subject
Date: 2003-06-20 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-06-20 02:16 am (UTC)Of course you have to omit those young kids who copy music who don't have the money to buy CDs. These are the ones the industry "research" particularly targets, but in actuality those kids, far from being a threat to the industry are actually the big future supporters of it. But by alienating them, the industry is potentially damaging their biggest future source of income.