How is it stealing, when you own the music?
I don’t normally cross-post stuff like this in my diary, but I got to reading all of the background on the whole Napster thing and the new .NAP file format. I’m disgusted that it’s come to this. This is going to solve nothing. The RIAA missed the boat on the Internet as the next distribution medium for their labels, and once again, the cost of that is pushed back on the consumer.
After further reading, I found this article, from Courtney Love (don’t skip it because it’s Courtney Love, trust me, read it). It’s worth a read. Its really well put together, and covers a lot of issues I never even realized about “Sharecropping”, and how bands are raped by their label. Bands now have to file for bankruptcy just to get out of their agreements, so they can pay rent!. The RIAA is trying to regulate this, so that it’s harder for bands to declare bankruptcy. Uhm, excuse me?
“It’s piracy when the RIAA lobbies to change the bankruptcy law to make it more difficult for musicians to declare bankruptcy. Some musicians have declared bankruptcy to free themselves from truly evil contracts. TLC declared bankruptcy after they received less than 2 percent of the $175 million earned by their CD sales. That was about 40 times less than the profit that was divided among their management, production and record companies.”
“Toni Braxton also declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album. Bankruptcy can be an artist’s only defense against a truly horrible deal and the RIAA wants to take it away.”
You can read all the gory details here.
I’m pissed because my radio got stolen from my locked Jeep back in March, and the only way I can listen to music right now is on my computer(s). I rip every cd I buy to ogg and some mp3s. I do not share them with anyone other than myself and my
girlfriend. There are independant labels that I do distribute mp3s of, but I have full consent of those bands themselves, and I do not listen to the raw cd’s themselves because it’s very inconvenient to do so.
All of this CPRM, RIAA, etc. madness is leveraged to take that away from me. How much longer before we’re told what data we can and cannot make, and what medium we can store it on. Maybe I should listen to ‘strings /dev/urandom > /dev/dsp‘ more. Oh wait, now that’s bypassing copyright controls, so I’m in violation of the DMCA.
…back into the cave I go. Much more work before the 0.10.1 release of pilot-link.