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| View Poll Results: Support the RIAA or not? | |||
| YES, I DO SUPPORT. |
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9 | 15.52% |
| NO, I DO NOT SUPPORT. |
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49 | 84.48% |
| Voters: 58. You may not vote on this poll | |||
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#46
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
OK,
I have been trying to get some hard numbers from some reputable sources so here is one with a pie chart and everything...http://cgi.cnn.com/interactive/enter...t.exclude.html If you take a close look, there are a lot of people who have their hand in the pie who have nothing whatsoever to do with the performance. Of the $16.98 reported by Billboard Magazine to CNN only $1.99 goes to the artist/songwriter. If they are two people they split the fee. Out of that money the songwriter pays the publishing house, agent fees, copyright fees, legal, etc. The artist pays the recording studio fees, the backup musicians, the rental equipment for recording, all of the material (DAT tapes, cd blanks, etc.), engineering fees and then himself if anything is left. Often the recording company has a contract with the artist that requires a minimum number of personal appearances, guests shots on talk shows, interviews, shopping center opens etc. They may pay for the travel or they may not but the performances are usually gratis or industry minimums. For tours it is very hard to make money at the artist level because of all of the people involved. And if you hit it really big and CD sales exceed expectations, costs go down and profits go up. The hard fact is, after all of this hard work, with everyone and their brother with their hand in your pocket you are further pressed by people who are taking money from you without anymore involvement than owning a computer with a CD drive and some software. You don't see even a single cent per copy from the bootleg. If you further research the recording sales data you will see that sales has fallen from a peak in 2000-2002 while the costs of living has risen. |
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#47
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
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#48
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
Ben,
Exactly my point! The author more or less agress that CD sales have been hurt in terms of number of units. He goes on to state that the total revenue is up because of higher pricing but it is not keeping step with inflation. Musician cost of living keeps rising while revenue remains flat and sales continue a downward slide. One should also note that the article is undated but quoting four year old statistics and an RIAA data sheet from 2001. The author goes on to try and attribute some reasoning behind the numbers by trying (without the benefit of sound demographic statistics) to classify the CD buying public and show that there is a perceived change in buying habits among the different population types. If you were to look at later data (the most recent RIAA data which displays through the end of 2005) you would see an even more significant drop in sales units. Now that gas is at an elevated level, the shipping costs are starting to skew for even less profit. I am sure this will be reflected in the dismal numbers for 2006 as well. |
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#49
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
Quote:
Nice article but 4 years old. I live in Toronto and ride the TTC occasionally. I would guess that at least 35% of the other people have MP3 players in their ears. That is a huge difference to the amount I saw when there were tapes and CDs. If even half of them (by your numbers much higher) were stealing their music just look at the loss. Read some of Al's numbers and compare with your ideas and see if they balance out. |
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#50
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
As far as stealing music, I don't believe that art should have a financial value, or even be allowed to be copywritten. As an artist (paint, pen, paper, and drums) I don't believe that art should be sold. I stil pay for all of my music, but it erks me all the time.
As for the RIAA, I'm issuing people a challenge. Show me hard numbers from reputable sources showing them doing any GOOD. This means money going to artists after a settlement, or artists being reimbursed for their "loss." If people can show me even a single case of that, then the RIAA has done its job. If not, it's simply another annoying machine in our overly congested American dream... |
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#51
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Pirates... ARGH!
We're not looking at a moral issue here, we're looking at an economic one.
Sometimes people lose out when new tech, or a new economic idea comes around, they can either adapt or die. That's life in the free-market world of capitalism. We could have outlawed the light bulb because the candle making trade was going to be annihilated, or we could have outlawed cars because they put horse-breeders at risk. We could have done it, and kept those wonderful people employed in what they do best, but society as a whole would be denied these things. Legislating this stuff, while it does ensure people don't get brushed aside by the brutal pace of technology, just puts a freeze on tech growth and innovation, and denies society as a whole of many wonderful things. P2P networking is very dangerous to business models based upon large production costs to produce a final product (such as Hollywood films), however the practically zero distribution costs means that small groups that can produce quality content can easily cast their net much wider than they could before. Meaning that if this became a normally acceptable thing in society, that large businesses and non-physical distribution chains have just about everything to lose... While small mobile businesses and individual creators have everything to gain and profit from. (Read "The World is Flat" if you want to explore this idea) It isn't stealing. Stealing is when you deprive someone of their property. When a resource is infinite (as this technology makes things), than I consider hording that resource all to yourself, dictating who is to use it, for what purpose, and in what way is morally wrong. The RIAA will do everything in their power to kill this stuff, because it ultimately means doom for them and the companies they represent. Now we can let the free-markets take their course, and have new innovative companies and ideas spring to life to take their place and make everything better overall, or we can put a freeze on technology so that these people and companies remain in power and any upsetting ideas are made illegal. Your choice. |
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#52
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
Craig and Chris,
Interesting.... If you were to set pen to paper and produced a spectacular sketch of the Lower Falls at Yellowstone N.P. and then you turned around and gave it away to the masses you would feel really great that the world was enjoying and benefiting from your work. What if the first person to accept the drawing instead chose to print off copies and sell them and it turned into a marketing success story where that person was raking money by the bushel. What would your reaction be? Wouldn't your attitude change? Wouldn't you see that you could benefit from your gift even in a small way but that someone else was not only reaping financial rewards but was undermining your original intentions? Would you continue to draw and give away? Using the horse vs. car analogy...This isn't new tech improving the way things are done. In your analogy, this would be the masses coming in and taking your horses each night to pull wagons for them for free. You don't know who "they" are but your business is being hurt because your customer base is turning to the other people who are providing horses at night. You see your business dwindle and your horses tire and you start to talk to other teamsters who are having the same problem. You all decide you need to find these perpetrators and do something to prevent them from taking the horses. You realize that it needs someone to be watching all the horses every night and you all decide you can't watch horses and sleep. So you decide to form a group, an association, where everyone will pay a little into a common fund. Then the fund will pay someone to watch out each night and find a way to prevent the taking of horses each night. To put this another way that may make more sense...You approach another team, Wildstang for instance. You see that they have a new wheel design that is better than omni wheels. Everyone is crazy for the new wheels. Wildstang gives you one to hold and even to borrow to show your team and other friends. You have a machine that can copy any mechanical part in a few seconds. You take the wheel and copy it and start selling it as an Team XYZ new and improved wheel. Then you go over to the Thunder Chickens and get them to give you one of their new transmissions to see and understand. You take that tranny and copy it and sell it and/or give to friends. Then over to the Martians for an aiming mechanism, to SigmaCats for a base, and Beachbots for ball accumulator, etc. Is any of this right? Did you not steal the wheel from Wildstang and the tranny and all the other parts and profit from them in some way? Even if you just started handing them out for free to just your friends, did someone do something wrong? Was someone hurt by your actions? Did you violate GP? Think about your answer, remember GP. |
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#53
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Re: Pirates... ARGH!
Quote:
You make some good points however misguided. The RIAA is protecting what belongs to them. It is no different than your team making a part for your robot and me coming to your pit area and taking it. Or take IFI for example. You are provided with a part (control system) You own the box, however the intellectual property belongs to IFI. You do not have the right to copy or reproduce without their permission. Now if you feel that it is OK to copy and reproduce, IFI will lose it's revenue stream. That means an increase to all of the legal owners as the increase costs (development & production/ purchases = cost to company) are passed on so that the company can survive. Eventually, as Al stated so well, it will not pay and the company will shut down production. Now we are all losers. The reasons for patents and copyrights are to protect those that spend the money to develop the product. The fact that others don't take the chances, have the inability, or are just to lazy to produce their own material should not minimize the work of the industrious, intelligent and hard workers. Basically if you reproduce any copyrighted/ patented material without the express written permission of those holding the rights then you are a basic common thief. There is no other way to look at it. It is no different than breaking into a house and stealing the contents, using someone else's credit card without their permission, or taking parts from some other teams pit area. It is black and white. You either have the rights or not. You may not like what I say, but as of now, that is the law. Last edited by Steve W : 22-08-2006 at 07:59. |
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#54
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
I am definitely do not support the RIAA. With that being said, I also pay for my music through iTunes.
Quite frankly, it's not worth buying a whole CD. In today's "bubble gum music" culture there is only 1 or 2 decent songs per album. Why pay $13 to $18 for a CD when you only want a couple songs available on iTunes for $2. This is common sense. I have a couple problems with the RIAA and copy protection in general:
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#55
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
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There justification is, if you use it and not paying for it, it's stealing. Yet we loan parts and designs all the time. Are we then all thieves for using parts we got from other people that we did not buy? RIAA and our current intelllectual property laws suggest that we are. Last edited by thegathering : 22-08-2006 at 09:13. |
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#56
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
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#57
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
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#58
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
If it were a great idea to distribute free music, why don't the artists do it? On ITunes there are free downloads every week that are legal. That is one way of getting your music out there. If the artists want to give their music away for free they will but they know if they do that they might end up at Walmart as greeters instead of touring, making money.
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#59
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Re: Pirates... ARGH!
Quote:
Wouldn't that same logic then say that it's alright to freely distribute any software that was not intended to be free? I think that what the recording industry doesn't understand is that many people use P2P services for their music because there isn't a good alternative. $20 dollars for a CD is ridiculous, and $1 a song isn't that much better. It also doesn't help that online music services put copy protection in the music. Once music is available at a reasonable price, without copy protection, and at higher quality than it's available for free, many people will stop using P2P networks for their music and start buying it. |
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#60
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Re: RIAA or no RIAA?
Not to add anything to the fire but just to fix in your mind some history...
In 1973 an LP from the Columbia Record Club, was about $12.99 plus shipping. That was roughly 24 times the cost of a loaf of bread or a gallon of gasoline. Price should not enter into a discussion like this. That was when the minimum wage was $1.65/hr. and a $400 week was a good wage. |
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