P2P Users - Let's win this battle (fairly and legally)!

The time is now to organize against the RIAA, MPAA and others!

With a new "copy protection" technology, which seriously limits our listening habits, are being invented every week, and with governments willing to give out our rights to the entertainment industry, it's time for us, the paying consumers, to take a stand.

I beleive that as long as it is so expensive and complicated to get that one song that I like (I have to go to a store and purchase all the songs in the album for that one song) , I should be able to freely download songs from the web. Yep, for free.

OK, It's nice that I have my beleif, you say. But the RIAA believes otherwise, right?
Well, they can beleive whatever they want. But if we all organize, they wouldn't be able to DO whatever they want. How?

You might think of others who tried this before. But no one succeeded in organizing all of us together for the cause. And the cause itself wasn't that good - I saw many website calling to boycott the RIAA, but how would that help? Not buying CDs only proves the RIAAs argument, that we are all thieves who don't buy CDs.

So what should we do? Our plan should be to engage people into buying CDs of artists or bands they like after they checked them out through freeP2P networks (in order to make the authorities to see that we're not just thieves), engage in the politics (gain congressmen support?) and take legal actions (when financially posiible).

Some of our points might be:

• In order to purchase my favorite song, I have to buy a whole album, which might contain songs that I don't like at all. In some countries, as far as I know, it is illegal to force someone to buy two or more products together just to get one of them. If we say that each song is an individual product, we might get somewhere.
• Unlike other products that can be purchased, music is addictive. This isn't true for other "information" products like books or movies (might be somewhat true for computer games). The record industry is pushing a song through all entertainment channels,just to make us ADDICTED to it. This is how people just have some kind of an urge to hear a song that they don't have. And if they need it immediately, their best option is to download it off the net. I find this a very intersting point that I thought of lately, and if we can truly prove that songs and music are addictive, I think the RIAA would be forced to consider this.
• There are many independent unsigned artists who gain a lot of publicity through free P2P networks. Eliminating those networks may eliminate the last effective distribution channel which isn't controlled by the entertainment industry's media giants.
• Copy-Protecting our legally purchased CDs is truly too much. I like hearing songs on my PC while I work! Why can't I do that? I payed lots of money for that right! And what if I don't have a stereo and my only CD-capable device is my PC?

I have many ideas, some of them might be better than those listed here (ahhm... I might have also forgot some... I'll try to remember... )

So how do we gain power to get our voice heard? First step is to promote through websites like Zeropaid, Slyck, Napjunk and UTC (if it comes back online). This will get us in contact with most of the hard-core P2P fans. I do hope that those websites would help us with that, most have shown good will to many pro-P2P ideas. The people that come to our organization's website would be able to contribute ideas and hopefully donate some money (if they want to, of course). Generally my plan is to let the community which will form in that website decide the organization's directions and actions.

The next step would be to get the support of the big P2P networks. In return, well, we might be able to make their networks legitmate, or at least help them some way in their legal affairs.
If we get promoted through P2P clients, most of the P2P users will get to hear about us.

Members of our newly created community could contribute their legal advices or programming code, for example.

Another thing that could be done is to contact artists and ask them to allow us to make quicklinks (links that intiate a dowload thruogh P2P clients) of their songs through our website. Of course we would only do that if the artist is allowed to do that by his\her contract, or if the artist is unsigned\independent. I would like to develop a program that would rip MP3s from CDs, but only CDs that were allowed by the artists to be ripped thruogh us, and then automatically create quicklinks that would be submitted to our website.
The artists would gain in return more popularity for helping our cause, and more exposure to a crowd that does buy CDs of artists they like.

Together we have the power to win this battle over free P2P. I have chosen the name "FairP2P" for this organization and website, but this is open for suggestions.

I think that's it for now. Please post your comments!
If you wish to offer help, or get any additional information, please contact me by e-mail: fairp2p@yahoo.cm or simply post here.

[multi]

welcome oh fair one....
hope you enjoy these napsterites forums....

i have had this sort of idea in the works
as i and a few others see community based P2P as a wayp2p clients will be heading in the future so my idea for a
"P2P Community Liason Orifice"
at first will be just a few search engines and a links to diferent forums....
and see how it goes from there
hope to have some info for up and coming p2p clients and newly emerging networks...

good luck with the mission....

[JackSpratts]

welcome to the forum fairp2p. i'm confident you'll find many kindred souls among our members and perhaps as importantly, i'm sure you'll find help and support here at peer-to peer and nu…

now that the reality has sunk in of having a handful of mostly foreign controlled media companies dictating the free speech terms to all americans is not in the best interest of the republic, citizens are beginning to gradually wake up and form alliances to fight back. the result is that some "strange bedfellows" are appearing before congress to do battle. one such pair, the electronic freedom foundation and verizon communications have begun prowling the halls of the house and senate working on our behalf, in order that we may continue to enjoy these file sharing networks that we in essence have built with great effort out of our pcs and our bandwidth.

when those in congress realize there is a downside to rubber-stamping everything the riaa and mpaa forces into committee, we will find a more receptive ear for our transmissions. the time has come to hit this issue and to hit it cleanly and hard.

File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.

stay on message and repeat often.

- jack spratts.

[MagicMorpheus]

File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business.File sharing is good. It's great for the congressmans' constituents and it's a good thing for the media companies. It's a positive force for people and business...

[JackSpratts]

see - now don't cha feel a lot better?

- js.

[MagicMorpheus]

I feel hella of lot better!

[multi]

Originally posted by MagicMorpheus
I feel hella of lot better!

in case ppl mis the post i made in fair p2p's thread at slyck
do you think one more point could be :
Being able to buy a cd or some sort of future online music format
that will allow easy copying to other devices..like a mp3walkman,car mp3 player ..ect
many of these products will be rendered virtualy useless if the music industry has its way..

sort of along the line of what you were saying here:
Copy-Protecting our legally purchased CDs is truly too much. I like hearing songs on my PC while I work! Why can't I do that? I payed lots of money for that right! And what if I don't have a stereo and my only CD-capable device is my PC?

my only CD-capable device is my PC?
this is me ...
i never took up the idea of owning a cd player untill
i got a cd rom on my first computer...i was happy with tapes(that soon wore off after my introduction to cd's)
and this sort of my point.....
the music industry has allowd us to become digital music junkies
since the early 80's CD's have captured pretty much all of the remaining cassette tape market.....why?
because of the sound reproduction?IMO once you are used to it,you never go back to cassette tapes....
the same as ,once you have all your desired tracks on your hard drive.and you are used to listening to them that way.....well
you never want to search piles of cd's for songs(unless its to rip the farkers(: ....)
the way i see it is, the money hungry music corporations have let a music listening lifestyle evolve.....spawned by them,a technology everybody has taken for granted as a day to day thing.....a technology that now (:
has turned tail to bite the master....

I love to think long after the demise of the riaa and CO ,kids will marvel
at the fact their parents listend to these things called "pop stars" when they were children...
(pumped up overproduced peices of eye candy that they are....)
the one question is
how will the artist survive then ,will any body create music?
music is a gift everybody has
maybe more ppl will just make music for themselves
and share it with freinds that dont?
any ideas on this....

[JackSpratts]

Originally posted by multi inter user face
I love to think long after the demise of the riaa and CO ,kids will marvel
at the fact their parents listend to these things called "pop stars" when they were children...
(pumped up overproduced peices of eye candy that they are....)
the one question is
how will the artist survive then ,will any body create music?
music is a gift everybody has
maybe more ppl will just make music for themselves
and share it with freinds that dont?
any ideas on this....

i think that youth culture, for a a variety of reasons too boring to get into in this post, will always gravitate towards a sort of safe outlaw they can aspire to be or to safely sleep with. record company economics being what they are now see labels creating the creatures and reaping the dividends. i think the future will bring us entrepreneurs who use music as the vehicle to promote their stars but whose economic models don't depend on unit sales of prerecorded songs to consumers for profit. the songs will still be there, as awful and ubiquitous as always but they'll be free thru d/l's or bundled in cross promotions with other items. the real money will lie elsewhere but the songs will remain the same.

additionally of course we'll hear more and more great independent music as it gets as easy to make as it now is to distribute.

- js.

[TankGirl]

Hi FairP2P and welcome to Napsterites!

Originally posted by FairP2P
So what should we do? Our plan should be to engage people into buying CDs of artists or bands they like after they checked them out through freeP2P networks (in order to make the authorities to see that we're not just thieves), engage in the politics (gain congressmen support?) and take legal actions (when financially posiible).

Political and legal actions are certainly valid avenues in the battle against the copyright nazis. It is important to lessen the political power of the content industry puppets, and in the long run preferably replace them all with political candidates who are more committed to serve people instead of corporations.

As for buying CDs from artists whom we have sampled through free p2p channels, I am not so sure if that is the right thing to campaign for. Buying directly from artists and small non-abusive indie labels is fine for me (if you have the money to do it) but as for the big RIAA labels it will only mean more money and longer life for them. It would probably be much more beneficial for the whole music scene if the big content conglomerates would break down into smaller pieces due to economical reasons so that more artist-friendly labels could start to dominate the market.

I also think that it is very difficult to get people to change their CD buying habits through any campaigns. Those who have the money and like to get their music easily will probably keep buying CDs from their favorite artists (RIAA or not), and those who have learned the free way and established good online sources will invest their entertainment money (if they have any) to other things like more bandwidth, better computing gear, DVDs and games.

- tg

[multi]

additionally of course we'll hear more and more great independent music as it gets as easy to make as it now is to distribute.
^now that is what i like to hear.....