The RIAA factor

[aymnostalgico]

Can someone explain to me why are we boycotting RIAA, so I know what to support? I know all the stuff about illegal download that's going on. I just want to know what are we standing for as members of amcorner.com boycotting.

 

[Dave]

I really thought at one time RIAA was actually working towards the BETTERMENT of The Recording Industry. That is, making good High Quality equipment and products. Though records that scratch, tick, hiss and pop are hardly the definition--hence that's one reason why people tape stuff or at least move up to CD's.

Dave

...citing that the RIAA was once "the record collector's best friend", or so it said...

 

[Rudy]

Can someone explain to me why are we boycotting RIAA, so I know what to support? I know all the stuff about illegal download that's going on. I just want to know what are we standing for as members of amcorner.com boycotting.

It's up to individuals if they want to boycott RIAA products...I just provide it as a link on the home page since it affects all of us as music buyers.

One thing I'm against is the RIAA's strong-arm tactics in dealing with illegal downloaders. Suing 12 year olds? Putting thugs on the street to harass street vendors (and impersonating police officers)? "Funding" the elections of politicians and judges that agree to their agenda? And notice how they pump up public awareness of downloading while quietly sweeping their involvement in price fixing under the carpet, hoping nobody will notice? They have way too much power for what was originally just a lobbyist organization.

It's not saying that what the downloaders and pirates do isn't wrong: it is wrong. But it's also wrong the way the RIAA is handling it. I inadvertently avoid RIAA products since I buy just about all of my music used. (I'll let someone else pay.) I buy used because not only are new releases too expensive (something the RIAA and record labels still can't understand, especially in this bad economy), I can buy a lot more music if I buy it used.

 

[W.B.]

One factor is that the RIAA has deteriorated in recent times into an extortion/blackmail/coercion/shakedown racket, going after the poorer and more "vulnerable" sections of our population and, before that, actively seeking to sabotage computer technology, especially as it relates to the Internet, as well as forcing arbitrarily discriminatory "copy-protectionist" technology down our throats. They have also shown a callous disregard for the consumer, making it a point of treating them like subhuman garbage and engaging in the most vicious stereotypes against them that, if directed at minorities or at certain ethnic or religious groups, would lead to cries of "racial profiling" and calls for their heads. They were also instrumental (along with the Disney company and the MPAA) in radically reworking copyright law (in the forms of the DMCA and the Sonny Bono Act) into a one-sided, Bolshevik straitjacket that solely benefits a privileged few and has been consistently used as a billy club/weapon against consumers and technology companies; in short, to drive our society into what amounts to to a technological Dark Ages. That's part of the story. . . .

 

[W.B.]

It's not saying that what the downloaders and pirates do isn't wrong: it is wrong. But it's also wrong the way the RIAA is handling it.

This is a distinction that I've believed should be kept into perspective. After all, the old saying goes, two wrongs don't make a right, and thanks for underscoring that . . .

 

[Rudy]

They have also shown a callous disregard for the consumer, making it a point of treating them like subhuman garbage and engaging in the most vicious stereotypes against them that, if directed at minorities or at certain ethnic or religious groups, would lead to cries of "racial profiling" and calls for their heads.

THIS is probably one of my biggest complaints about them! In their incidents during the holiday shopping season, they actually made some anti-Hispanic comments while they were out on the streets impersonating police officers, shutting down street vendors selling illegal products by threatening actions that they very well knew they couldn't enforce in a court of law. They automatically assume that if you own a computer with an internet connection, you ARE a downloader. If you have a CD burner, you ARE a pirate. Therein lies the idea of "subhuman garbage"...they're very ANTI-CONSUMER. Naturally. They're funded by the recording industry.

And does it not bother anyone that the recording industry is owned mainly by non-U.S. companies, and yet they have access to the U.S. political process via the RIAA? That is wrong as well. The RIAA is not the United Nations.

Their latest nonsense is having a John Doe lawsuit ready to sue people that they don't even know the identity of, except for the downloaders' IP addresses. "I don't know who you are, but I can still sue you."

The RIAA is sick and wrong. In the proper venue, a judge with any sense of the law (rather than one they've "bought" by funding their campaigns) would blow holes right through their tactics. The cure for the music industry's ills certainly does not lie in the RIAA's jack-booted thuggery and treating their source of income (us consumers) as garbage.

Slightly off-topic, but file sharing will implode on itself anyway. Lately, I've heard of some users getting viruses through the sharing systems. I have a feeling that there are enough malicious individuals out there that these sharing services will become as useless through virus transmission as e-mail has become through spamming.

 

[Rudy]

One final note about the RIAA: there are a growing number of well-known artists who have already figured out that the RIAA goes against their best interests. They end up self-producing their own work or releasing on independent labels, which are free of RIAA's control. A few have spoken out about it, also, to good effect.

 

[W.B.]

And does it not bother anyone that the recording industry is owned mainly by non-U.S. companies, and yet they have access to the U.S. political process via the RIAA? That is wrong as well. The RIAA is not the United Nations.

Their latest nonsense is having a John Doe lawsuit ready to sue people that they don't even know the identity of, except for the downloaders' IP addresses. "I don't know who you are, but I can still sue you."

The RIAA is sick and wrong. In the proper venue, a judge with any sense of the law (rather than one they've "bought" by funding their campaigns) would blow holes right through their tactics. The cure for the music industry's ills certainly does not lie in the RIAA's jack-booted thuggery and treating their source of income (us consumers) as garbage.

Because once you have what the RIAA's been pulling, then you've essentially stooped to the level of such disreputable countries as Cuba, North Korea, or Zimbabwe -- and this, in turn, reduces our credibility as a nation with our lecturing such retrograde states on human rights.

As for your "blowing holes" comment: Yeah, if the RIAA tried to sue an Al Franken or a Rosie O'Donnell, then their suits would be laughed out of court (just ask Fox News or Gruner + Jahr) . . . but since they're suing primarily the poor or the vanishing middle class, it's basically open season. Pathetic.

 

[alpertfan]

It's all about money. The RIAA claims it's looking out for artists' interests, but in reality, they're looking out for #1 (themselves). They don't want to lose money.
I'm not defending their high CD prices, but I have a theory about it: Since the dominant medium before the 1990s was the vinyl LP, one vinyl album cost about $20. Now that CDs have largely replaced records, they cost what records used to cost. It is ridiculous since they're a smaller medium.
I predict that once the SACD format takes over, regular CDs will cost ten dollars (what cassette tapes are now valued at).

In the end, it's all about money.

alpert...who sees behind the masked tricks of the music biz.

 

[Murray]

I predict that once the SACD format takes over, regular CDs will cost ten dollars (what cassette tapes are now valued at).

In the end, it's all about money.

I predict that once SACD takes over, you won't even be able to buy a regular CD. They'll all be hybrids, and likely be priced 5 dollars higher than CDs are now, even though a hybrid SACD may cost an extra 5¢ to manufacture...

The Canadian equivalent of the RIAA - the CRIA - is starting to borrow the tactics of it's American cousin. They currently have a list of 29 people that they want to sue for downloading music, but they don't know the peoples' identities, only their IP addresses. They are before the courts, trying to force the ISPs to divulge their clients names and addresses. This is going to be a major test of Canada's privacy legislation.

The CRIA has already bought enough politicians, that last year the government imposed a 21¢ tax on every CD-R, supposedly to compensate the recording industry for home copying of CDs. The problem is, the tax applies to ALL CD-Rs, so people and businesses who use them exclusively for recording computer DATA still have to pay this tax.

Murray

 

[W.B.]

It's all about money. The RIAA claims it's looking out for artists' interests, but in reality, they're looking out for #1 (themselves).

In truth, they couldn't care less about the artist(s) at all -- except to cynically use him/her/them as pawns to serve their own nefarious ends. Sort of reminds me of those dictatorships in certain parts of the world that keep the masses in perpetual poverty and squalor so as to keep them always riled up against America and the West.

 

[aymnostalgico]

One thing I don't understand about the industry that makes optical drives and compact disks is the inability to come up with the technology in the form of access denial to copy a commercial cd to a blank cd or even just plain encode the commercial cd so that it just plays on computers and not burn. I don't think this is difficult and I'm leaning more toward an answer that possibly pertains to the optical industry not wanting to do this. It comes down to the filthy green paper.