1 for the record companies

[jacksoncsplayer]

It's about time, I'm not sure about the rest of you but I buy my music and I think it's the right thing to do.

DULUTH, Minn. - The recording industry won a key fight Thursday against illegal music downloading when a federal jury found a Minnesota woman shared copyrighted music online and levied $222,000 in damages against her.
The jury ordered Jammie Thomas, 30, to pay the six record companies that sued her $9,250 for each of 24 songs they focused on in the case. They had alleged she shared 1,702 songs online in violation of their copyrights.
"This does send a message, I hope, that downloading and distributing our recordings is not OK," said Richard Gabriel, the lead attorney for the music companies.
In the first such lawsuit to go to trial, the record companies accused Thomas of downloading the songs without permission and offering them online through a Kazaa file-sharing account. Thomas denied wrongdoing and testified that she didn't have a Kazaa account.
Record companies have filed some 26,000 lawsuits since 2003 over file-sharing, which has hurt sales because it allows people to get music for free instead of paying for recordings in stores. Many other defendants have settled by paying the companies a few thousand dollars.

[Freehill]

Sucks to be her.

[Newc]

Far out. It's funny in a tragic way how a major industry can say they're being robbed and not have to produce solid evidence, and practically ruin one person's life (well, in addition to the artists they've got by the balls), but consumers have no recourse against price-gouging.

They also have all the power in the contracts, and are not open to reasonable negotiations before those contracts are signed.

Not to mention it was the MPAA and RIAA who decided on the limitations that CD-R/RW and DVD-R/RW media and recorders available to consumers have. They didn't want people putting the entire Zeppelin catalog on one CD, so they paid for the "industry standards" regarding how much can be put on one disc.

The mathematical formula that calculates how many kilobytes a minute of audio is force-fed into the software and hardware components that govern the recording of audio on a computer, so if you change "1+1=2" to "2+1=2", the computer follows what it is told.

[delt]

^ +1, as a customer i don't feel very respected.

...about the Movie Police Association of Assholes, considering how many dvd's i paid for and got ripped off, i think i "contributed" more than my share of money to this corrupted to shit industry.

And i'm definitely not buying any more audio CD's now that they pass off those "copy protected" ones that don't play in a PC, and can even damage older normal CD players.

[cdwillis]

Bands make more money off touring than records don't they? This is just for the record companies profit.

I think if I were in a signed band I would rather have someone illegally download and hear my music if it meant they would come to the shows and buy merch.

[markb]

Very popular mainstream acts would suffer from downloading. New and underground type acts would often be dead without downloading. Extreme metal bands in particular benefit from downloading. The crowds they get and the merchandise they sell, and even the cds they sell are pretty much directly the result of downloading exposure. A pretty large chunk of the music industry thrives on downloading.

Watching the record companies flail and curse and go down in flames... tough shit assholes. Music can be produced, marketed and easily distributed without them now. I remember when CDs came out... vinyl was about $10 each and CD's were an inflated 20 - 25$ each. Record companies were salivating at the thought of convincing consumers to replace their record collections (forcing them to actually) at inflated prices. They thought people would pay that much because they would be dumbfounded by this 'noofangled teck-nologee' and would be fooled into thinking that it must be space age expensive to produce this wonderfulness. But many people knew right from the get go it was total bullshit, digital data is the cheapest and easiest to work with, and it was a scam. the downfall of the record companies will be that they were too right: it was too easy and cheap to work with, anyone can do it. Fuck them all.

[jacksoncsplayer]

I agree with alot of the negative sentiments and they are justified because alot of good Artists got fucked pretty good, but they also have done some good. They did bring music into our homes and make it much more portable, they did help upgrade technology in the recording industry, they did help bands with promotion and marketing, they did provide revenue to Artists whom otherwise would have starved and probably never made it on their own. Did they rob people? Absolutely! But bands get paid royalties and bonuses for albums sold as well as radio airplay. So this piracy does hurt the bands. I am not for the robbery, but I am for the bands who get paid when we buy albums. Ask some top selling acts if they support free music trade and see what they say, it is stealing from them.

[Bob From Accounting]

If CDs & DVDs weren't so expensive maybe ppl would buy more and download less.. duhh

[Spivonious]

Far out. It's funny in a tragic way how a major industry can say they're being robbed and not have to produce solid evidence, and practically ruin one person's life (well, in addition to the artists they've got by the balls), but consumers have no recourse against price-gouging.

We have plenty of recourse. It's called not buying the CD. It's not called "I'm not paying $15 for a CD so I'll just download it instead." Music is not a necessity of life; it is a luxury.

They also have all the power in the contracts, and are not open to reasonable negotiations before those contracts are signed.

What contracts? Between the label and the artists? If the artist signs a contract that gives the record company 99% of the profits, then that's the artist's fault.

Not to mention it was the MPAA and RIAA who decided on the limitations that CD-R/RW and DVD-R/RW media and recorders available to consumers have. They didn't want people putting the entire Zeppelin catalog on one CD, so they paid for the "industry standards" regarding how much can be put on one disc.

The CD and DVD can only fit so much data; it's a physical limitation. Are you referring to the industry standards of 44kbps encoding? That was decided upon well before CD-Rs were even invented.

The mathematical formula that calculates how many kilobytes a minute of audio is force-fed into the software and hardware components that govern the recording of audio on a computer, so if you change "1+1=2" to "2+1=2", the computer follows what it is told.

Again, I'm not too sure what you're referring to here. Audio is encoded on CDs at 44kbps. To copy this to a computer, you simply copy the bits. For MP3/WMA/AAC/etc. they are stripping out pieces of the sound wave that are on the fringes of the audible hearing spectrum which makes the sound data smaller. The user can choose how much of this to strip out by choosing the encoding bitrate, thereby controlling the size of the files generated.

[Newc]

I tested that theory once. I took high-quality WAV files (44.1, Stereo, no compression, etc) and got 12 songs on one CD-R.

Next I took those same high-quality WAV files and converted them to high-quality MP3s. Smaller file size, near-CD-quality sound (44.1, Stereo, etc etc).

Could not get more songs on the CD-R.

Next I bumped them all down to absolute crap. We're talking RealAudio sound-quality. Overly compressed, tinny, mono, 22.5kHz, etc.

Could not get more on a CD-R.

While I agree that major labels do need the money to provide their bands the advances used to record, produce, and promote their CDs, and the bands have to finance their tours as well as merchandise production, it's up to the band to find the cheapest rates they can in order to keep as much of that advance for themselves. That isn't always possible because the studios know how much the advances are, and they want as much of that money as they can get, as does every other person along that line.

And what I said about the contracts is this: The label sticks a contract in your face and says "we get 99% of the money you earn. period. it's not negotiable", and if it's the only deal in town, guess what?

Those contracts should be open to reasonable negotiation.

If you have a record label with 100 artists making $100,000 in sales each and only take 10% from each one, the label makes a million, whereas each individual artist takes home $90,000. How is that not fair to the label?
If only 80 of those 100 make $100,000, the label is still making more than the artists are combined.

These days everyone is guaranteed to sell at least 100,000 copies, and priced at $15 each, that's $1.5 million from all the artists combined. The label can survive on 10% of that, and since most labels have far more than 100 artists, they're still making a mint. The suits may not make $20Million/year, but they will certainly make enough to survive on. That's all they need, and all they deserve.

[SouthPlatteDemon]

It is funny to watch a record company go after a 30 year old woman. What a bunch of fucking pussies.

Lesson for all of us is don't use the commercial file sharing programs that even the dumb record execs can find with google. Use bit torrents people. It would take those old fogies years to figure out how to track a bit torrent.

Putting a DVD in with the CD and selling it for $15 is the only way they are going to survive. I'm not sure why they keep fighting for the old way.

The best thing we can do is to keep downloading. Pretty soon the record companies won't have any money to hire lawyers.

[Cleveland Metal]

Ohhhh, they are tracking bit torrents bro... And prosecuting.

I know several people that have gotten letters regarding DL'ing bit torrent movies and music. Surprised they weren't charged.

[SouthPlatteDemon]

Just like E-40 and the Click say,

"Hit it hard, then hibernate!"

[fett]

The companies are bleeding to death. CD sales are crashing. The Suits with the suits are pissing in the wind if they think they can stop this. Right or wrong doesn't matter. The music industry is way behind the curve and suits like this get air-time, but it will not solve the pickle they are in.

[Gunner]

I say fuck the record companies. They have fucked many bands. Take all the money and say fuck you, they should have read the fine lines in the contract. Many bands made the record co. millions and the band has shit.