No limit to their arrogance and greed

[TankGirl]

RIAA: ISPs should pay for music swapping
C|Net news


CANNES, France--A top music industry representative said Saturday that telecommunications companies and Internet service providers will be asked to pay up for giving their customers access to free song-swapping sites.

The music industry is in a tailspin with global sales of CDs expected to fall six percent in 2003, its fourth consecutive annual decline. A major culprit, industry watchers say, is online piracy.

Now, the industry wants to hit the problem at its source--Internet service providers (ISPs).

"We will hold ISPs more accountable," said Hillary Rosen, chairman and CEO the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), in her keynote speech at the Midem music conference on the French Riviera.

"Let's face it. They know there's a lot of demand for broadband simply because of the availability (of file- sharing)," Rosen said.

As broadband access in homes has increased across the Western world, so has the activity on file-sharing services.

The RIAA is a powerful trade body that has taken a number of file-swapping services, including the now defunct Napster, to court in an effort to shut them down.

Rosen suggested one possible scenario for recouping lost sales from online piracy would be to impose a type of fee on ISPs that could be passed on to their customers who frequent these file-swapping services.

Mario Mariani, senior vice president of media and access at Tiscali, Europe's third largest ISP, dismissed the notion, calling it impossible to enforce.

"The peer-to-peer sites are impossible to fight. In any given network, peer-to-peer traffic is between 30 (percent) and 60 percent of total traffic. We technically cannot control such traffic," he said.

Rosen's other suggestions for fighting online piracy were more conciliatory.

She urged the major music labels, which include Sony Music, Warner Music, EMI, Universal Music and Bertelsmann's BMG, to ease licensing restrictions, develop digital copyright protections for music and invest more in promoting subscription download services.

Pressplay and MusicNet, the online services backed by the majors, plus independent legitimate services such as Britain's Wippit.com, sounded somewhat optimistic about their long-term chances to derail free services such as Kazaa and Morpheus.

But they also acknowledged they cannot compete with the "free" players until the labels clear up the licensing morass that keeps new songs from being distributed online for a fee.

Officials from Pressplay and MusicNet, which are in their second year of operation, declined to disclose how many customers they have.

"We haven't really started yet," said Alan McGlade, CEO of MusicNet, when asked about his subscriber base.

Michael Bebel, CEO of Pressplay, said his customer tally is in the tens of thousands. He added that the firm, backed by Universal and Sony, could expand into Canada in the first half of the year, its second market after the United States. He didn't have a timeframe for Europe.

Meanwhile, Kazaa and Morpheus claim tens of millions of registered users who download a wide variety of tracks for free.

Rosen hailed a recent U.S. court decision which ruled that Kazaa, operated by Australian- based technology firm Sharman Networks, could be sued in the United States, as an important legal step to halting the activities of file-sharing services.

"It's clear to me these companies are profiting to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. They must be held accountable," Rosen said.


An interesting claim indeed.

Let's see how absurd this can get.... We have a monopolistic industry that stubbornly refuses to renew its products and business models in a changing world. Instead they bully and harass their most advanced customers for three years and finally - surprise, surprise! - face a real prospect of diminishing sales. After totally failing to develop anything attractive during that time they look around and pick another industry that has been able to evolve and succeed in similarly challenging circumstances - even under more or less open capitalistic competition - and demand to get a slice of that other industry's profits because the money 'really belongs to them'. Jesus F. Christ!

Well, at least Hilary says aloud one thing that we know for a fact: p2p is the prime attraction for broadband. That one she got right.

- tg

[Fantom]

As if pursuing the ISPs wasn't bad enough. Now they want compensation from the phone companies. For providing (shock, horror) a telephone line.

This is great news IMO, because it shows the RIAA for what they are, and completely destroys any credibility they may once have had. Even members of government and judiciary won't swallow this shit.

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by TankGirl
An interesting claim indeed.

Let's see how absurd this can get....

Well, at least Hilary says aloud one thing that we know for a fact: p2p is the prime attraction for broadband. That one she got right.

- tg

and it's not exactly a fresh idea even so. steve griffin, eccentric ceo of streamcast networks, parent company of morpheus, floated this very concept last year (and I don’t think it was original then either – it’s been around). he felt a small "tax' on isps would make everyone happy, remove the legal heat and lead to a rollout of new and improved p2ps. of course he may have been more concerned with his own companies’ fortunes than anything else. still it has to be recognized that most people who order high bandwidth to get onto the file sharing networks ultimately spend more money than ever acquiring content, it’s just that the money doesn’t go to record and video stores anymore, it goes to isps.

they’re all in a big tis at midem this year. bill gates choose the conference to announce his new drm and the resignations (mottola) etc are hovering over the affair like a corpse at a wedding.

my guess is that hillary has seen the writing on the wall and that the part with her in it is ending soon.

- js.

[theknife]

Originally posted by JackSpratts
my guess is that hillary has seen the writing on the wall and that the part with her in it is ending soon.

- js.

been wondering about that, too...the RIAA's got a lot of unhappy campers. it would certainly fit the ongoing pattern of denial to cast about for a head to sacrifice

ask not for whom the bell tolls, Hillary...it tolls for thee

[SA_Dave]

Mario Mariani, senior vice president of media and access at Tiscali, Europe's third largest ISP, dismissed the notion, calling it impossible to enforce.

"The peer-to-peer sites are impossible to fight. In any given network, peer-to-peer traffic is between 30 (percent) and 60 percent of total traffic. We technically cannot control such traffic," he said.

Impossible is a bit of an understatement! Looks like I chose the right ISP btw.

It's clear to me these companies are profiting to the tune of millions and millions of dollars. They must be held accountable," Rosen said.

"Hello pot. This is the p2p kettle!"

"Millions and millions"? I don't think that even FastTrack can claim that. Maybe you should try taxing the spyware companies. That way you'll make everone happy and you won't have to circumvent the DMCA you PIRATE!!

Originally posted by TankGirl
Well, at least Hilary says aloud one thing that we know for a fact: p2p is the prime attraction for broadband. That one she got right.

- tg

Heehee...

Originally posted by theknife
ask not for whom the bell tolls, Hillary...it tolls for thee

You get my vote Hillary!

[JohnDoe345]

The RIAA constantly blames file sharing when they haven't looked at the other factors. Although I'm sure they have but they're not going to mention it because it would go against their argument. The points they are conveniently forgetting to tell you is that pirating is nothing new and didn't sudden show up or become a problem until p2p programs arrived. Before the internet was ever invented people were making copies of cassette tapes and even VHS tapes. I know I had my fair share, but I also had my fair share of bought items.

So they ask how do we explain the decline in sales? Well this is how the long story goes. It started with the tech sector taking huge loses because rich "geniuses" invested millions of dollars in .com companies that never had a demand for their products. The average buyer also wasn't completely ready to make the jump to internet shopping so all the trillions of dollars spent on these companies were dumped with the trash. After that there were massive layoffs and since thousands of workers quit their other jobs and retrained themselves to jump on the tech sector bandwagon this meant that there was a sizable amount of people out of work and also a good amount of future works in or right out of college. This all brings us to the present. When the economy is doing poorly you can't expect your profits to be the same. Although for the RIAA it's very easy to have a scapegoat like file sharing. In a poor economy people are naturally going to cut back on all luxury items and anything in the entertainment industry falls under that category. File sharing does play a part in all of this but I don't believe it's the sole cause of all the huge losses they are talking about. The USA had a recession years back, but I don't remember a huge complaint about users coping cassette tapes even though coping tapes was as easy as drinking water.

The other factor they are forgetting is that the music industry is pretty flat in my opinion. Even though I can download songs for free I haven't downloaded anything for awhile. I've been averaging one song about every 2 months. Maybe that's only me but what if it's not. It is another factor in sales performance. So even if there were no file sharing programs, I really wouldn't be much of a customer. There are just too many cookie cutter artists now a days in my opinion. I believe this is due to the music industry only approving or trying to force music that they think the public wants and not what the artists thinks the public wants. Although that's all just speculation on my part based on claims that some artists are forced to play or act a certain way to make the music industry happy. There have also been claims that they have purposely killed off some artists because they were no longer wanted. Who knows that artist might have been the next great thing.

File sharing technology is also new and for some it's an exciting way of getting what they want. The convenience and benefit of getting exactly what they want appeals to some people. For example, being able to get the one great song from an album rather than having to get the whole album. I've wasted plenty of money on one hit wonder groups in the past and would like to avoid that whenever possible. As for videos, after a hard day of work and school I'm usually not in the mood to go out and rent something or go to the theatres. It's nice to come home and have the video waiting for you to watch(most of the time depending on how fast you can download it). The movie industry also don't realize that for couples who have children going to the theatres can cost way more than they are willing to spend due to the cost of hiring a baby sitter. During times of a poor economy people are going to try and cut corners so if there isn't another cheaper alternative or even simply just another convenient alternative like paid downloads then of course they are going to use p2p programs. If a movie is worth it then I still try to watch it in the theatres, but it would be more convenient for me to watch the rest at home. Money is only half of the equation, but the entertainment industry would like us to think that it's the sole factor.

But I believe the real problem is that the entertainment industry haven't yet figured out a way to captialize on this new media called the internet so they are they are crapping their pants about what to do. The easiest thing to do is ban it until they can come up with a solution rather than letting it get out of control.

Anyhow, this is how I see it rather than the RIAA BS they are telling us. Their idea of taxing ISPs just shows they still don't get it. Also in RIAA's case this is unjustified for me because I rarely download music. If they want to know the truth I actually download more tv shows than anything else because it's more convenient then always making sure I have enough tape left to record something since I record several shows at once. It also takes up less space storing these videos on the hard drive waiting to be viewed rather than on VHS tape.

[thinker]

One song every two months? Methinks you need to boost that tally, lad, that is unless you have it out the wazoo already.