Record Execs Furious At RIAA

[JackSpratts]

"This is a clear case of a multinational conglomerate using its political muscle to the disadvantage of everyone but itself. So, instead of creating new content and allowing long-standing laws to work, the entertainment business frantically seeks to manipulate the process to its own ends. And it does this with the obsequiousness of penurious politicians and a supinely acquiescent Supreme Court.

That is the best the establishment has to offer, and it has nothing to do with progress or the good of the society."

- John Snyder and Ben Snyder

Ice cold anger in there and exactly how I feel about it.

Finally, the money end is waking up.

Manifesto in Salon, WIR.

- js.

[TankGirl]

That was one hell of a manifesto, and right on the nail!

It was a great sum-up from the lessons of p2p so far, a must read for every p2p afficiando. Coming from somebody inside the music industry it demonstrates that there are intelligent forces and players also on the commercial side of the fence even if the big production/distribution conglomerates are acting like retarded bullies.

It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it.

Great stuff, thanks for pointing it out, Jack!

- tg

[SA_Dave]

Originally posted by TankGirl
That was one hell of a manifesto, and right on the nail!

It was a great sum-up from the lessons of p2p so far, a must read for every p2p afficiando. Coming from somebody inside the music industry it demonstrates that there are intelligent forces and players also on the commercial side of the fence even if the big production/distribution conglomerates are acting like retarded bullies.

Great stuff, thanks for pointing it out, Jack!

- tg

I agree wholeheartedly! Despite the fact that Prince is quoted for a third of a page ( I can't believe he actually spells like that and expects to make a serious point at the same time!), it really is an exceptional paper. If you only read one article this week, make sure it's that one!

(P.S. I notice it was cleverly appended to the trailing edge of this week's WIR.)

As I said in my comments on the WIR, I'm really shocked that the record business hasn't folded already. The following quote sums up my feelings nicely :

MP3s are lessening the decline of the music business, not creating it.

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by SA_Dave
I notice it was cleverly appended to the trailing edge of this week's WIR.

SA_Dave=Supremely Astute!

yes, it made the "late edition." the wir is always held open until the end of the dateline for just such an event, and while there may be the later minor change for typos or style, after saturday any items of substance are held for the next issue.

i've not seen a stronger denouncment by a responsible writer that i can ever recall. that it was written by a recording executive is more than unusual, it's extraordinary. it's also about time.

- js.

[nanook]

It could be argued that MP3s are the greatest marketing tool ever to come along for the music industry. If your music is not being downloaded, then you're in trouble. If you can't give it away, you certainly can't sell it.

lmao!
ain't that the truth.
WAKE UP AND SMELL THE COFFEE people.

excellent, excellent!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Smoketoomuch]

I only got to reading it yesterday - it is one of the finest peace of writing I recently read. I always (well, since the time I began to look into it) that there are profound similarities between the ideas behind Free Software and filesharing. I was especially delighted to see one of the Founding Fathers formulate that idea in clear words. Sometimes free software - similarly to p2p - by its opponents is described as unAmerican, even communist (or Bill Gates favorite metaphor: a cancer, a virus), so reading Thomas Jefferson's words was sweet indeed:

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of everyone, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density at any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."

I even posted the link on pclinuxonline.com [Thomas Jefferson's words on free software ]