OT: Recording Industry Ripoff

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Yes, I did mean legal.

[Baron Munchausen]

Imperator Fyron said:
Unfortunately for them, the biggest "threat," Bit Torrent, is impossible to eliminate, as literally anyone can start up a new tracker. The MPAA and RIAA (to a lesser extent) have sued/threatened to sue the major trackers out of existence, but 10 more popped up to replace each of them. Of course, BT pales in comparison to the threat posed to sales by producing more and more of the same old crap every year, with just a handful of decent artists/movies in their lineups.

Not just Bittorrent. All of the P2P networks are adapting to the threat. A new peer cache for the WinMX network is being developed in 'real time' while the machines online when the original Frontcode sites went down try to hold the network together. They've got it partly working already. And of course lots of people are just going to other networks. The Kazaa/WinMX generation of P2P developed after the original Napster was sued out of existence. Now a new generation of even more decentralized P2P will be developed that doesn't need a central server. (I think at least one program already has this 'completely independent' system. Gnutella? Sharezaa? One of those newer ones.)

The thing is, online P2P has only a small fraction of the potential of simple CD copying that anyone and everyone can now do with their home PCs. The bandwidth of all those CD-RW drives is a whole lot more than the internet.

[Xrati]

I guess that the RIAA is going to have to deal with a problem that they helped to create! Now Apple is telling them that their greed is not good. Will they listen or continue to waste money on aggressive legal actions that will never end p2p? OR will they start putting their money into better products. I already resent the fact that they are now heading for another format change. They've gone from vinyl to tape to DAT to CD and now to mp3, and now want a new format to combat piracy! The only piracy going on here is by them.

[Makinus]

Baron Munchausen said:
Not just Bittorrent. All of the P2P networks are adapting to the threat. A new peer cache for the WinMX network is being developed in 'real time' while the machines online when the original Frontcode sites went down try to hold the network together. They've got it partly working already. And of course lots of people are just going to other networks. The Kazaa/WinMX generation of P2P developed after the original Napster was sued out of existence. Now a new generation of even more decentralized P2P will be developed that doesn't need a central server. (I think at least one program already has this 'completely independent' system. Gnutella? Sharezaa? One of those newer ones.)

If you view the situation from a darwinian point of view, the BC´s (Big Corporations) are forcing the developlment of more advanced software that allows free sharing of information in the world.

Piracy is only the most famous (and bandwidth hungry) use of these programs, but they can be used to share information freely and wthitout any kind of censure, so, forcing the development of newer and better sharing software by the pirates worldwide, the BC´s are in fact creating better tools to ensure the freedom of information for everyone.

Of course, the BC´s don´t have a clue of that their actions will ultimately cause...

[Baron Munchausen]

And yet... as long as they have those long lists of captive 'artists' they will be a problem. They can claim to be 'defending the rights of the artists' and request more changes to the law and more hardware hassle to 'protect' their artists even while everyone (including the artists) know very well that they are defending their own )(*$^(^@$ profits. Recording artists usually end up owing money to the music companies because they structure all the fees and business risks to protect themselves not the artists. They have little choice but to sign the contract that the company offers because almost all new artists start out relatively poor. Then the artists make their own profits (if any) on tour following the publicity generated by the album and (sometimes) promotion by the music company.

So, if more and more artists start to realize they can just release tracks on P2P to 'promote' their tours and they don't need the exploting music companies then the end will truly be near for the suits. That is what they are afraid of, even more than the immediate losses of piracy of some of the works of their currently contracted artists. They are terrified that a new kind of music business could grow up that they aren't even part of and when the contracts run out, the artists just walk away...