Record Labels Push for iTunes Price Hike 971
csteinle writes "Looks like the major labels are getting their own way again. The New York Post reports that the price per track may be going up to $1.25, while the per album price for some albums could go as high as $16.99. The Register has its own take on this, too. Aren't you glad you starting paying for downloaded music?" Update: 05/07 19:15 GMT by M : Apple says their prices won't increase.
Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
It's so fucking stupid that I want to rip my nuts off, cook them, and then eat them. Note to RIAA: YOU ARE A BUNCH OF FUCKING IDIOTS. God... I just can't stand it. They're begging for us to pay for music. Some people do. Now they want more money from those people while giving them less than they would by buying the CD in the store.
Don't bow to the cartels, support FREE music! (Score:5, Insightful)
This does NOT mean anything of the sort. It means that if Apple wants to sell these songs on its online store it has to bow to the wishes of the music cartels. It's their music afterall.
You know, I have downloaded less than 10 songs since the height of the Napster/Kazaa days (2000/2001?) and the rest have been songs that are legally available for free. Why the hell are we bothering to support the cartel's music? You realize that they are going to keep pushing and pushing (with bait-and-switch if necessary) to keep online downloads out so that they can reign supreme in the sales of music.
Support only the artists that allow the free taping and distribution of their music! Do NOT let the cartels continue to dictate to you and your favorite artists how the music you love will be distributed and at what cost.
Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)
Bait and switch concepts always fail business, and it looks like Apple will have to cave to the pressure from groups like the RIAA (who happen to be in love with shady business practices). Drug dealers do the same thing; $0.99 for the first hit and then you get gouged when you're hooked! Maybe taco was right after all [slashdot.org]?!?
bound to happen (Score:2, Insightful)
Extra money? (Score:5, Insightful)
Load gun -- shoot foot... (Score:5, Insightful)
Until there is a "fair" alternative, meaning it's accepted as fair to the majority of open-minded and reasonable people, we will continue to see a well-defined, concerted effort to make music available for free.
iTunes was a step forward, and this represents 3 steps backward. It's a slap in the face to those who were actually paying for what was available for free. Expect them to be punished severely, in the form of greatly increased P2P activity.
Bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh...wasn't that practice illegal as well?
Cheers
J
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
From the register
At the 99-cent price, only about 10 cents from each song sale goes to Apple's bottom line, with about 70 cents going to the record labels and the other 20 cents paying for credit-card fees and distribution costs, sources say.
AHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
they're making a $0.70 profit on each song sold and doing absolutely no work to get it! kill me now! Armageddon has come! Jesus fuck this drives me insane. So now they need $0.95 per song?
Who's boss? (Score:1, Insightful)
Am all for Apple but the record labels need to know who's boss. Namely the customers.
The labels shoot themselves AGAIN! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's like the NBA - a big marketing scheme where the underlying product does not have the appeal nor the value their pushers would like us to assign...
Opens the door for WalMart (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry Charlie........
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:3, Insightful)
Either that, or they want to push apple out of the business so they can establish their own stranglehold on music.
Competition, plain and simple (Score:3, Insightful)
Now if they raise the price, the RIAA can hold onto its CD monopoly for a little while longer.
Shitty, but makes some sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry to use a cliche, but...
1. Offer songs for $.99 to get people hooked on buying online
2. Increase price of song by $.26
3. Wait until people get used to that, then increase price of song to $2.00
4. Profit!
My gut tells me that this is not going to happen, as Apple has plenty of money in the bank to run the store at its current price point. Speaking as someone who works in an establishment that has priced itself out of interest for almost all of our local demographic, I sure hope that if they raise the prices, they know what they're doing.
MG
why assume it was the RIAA? (Score:2, Insightful)
I suspect that the reporters found out that the price is going up, but have no real clue what happened in the negotiations.
Isn't it possible that Apple wanted to increase their profit margins just as much as the record labels did?
Big name retailers win, consumers lose again! (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheaper promotion + Cheaper distribution + Cheaper Capital costs is supposed to equal Lower Prices (tm).
In order for online distribution to succeed, there has to be some sort of critical mass of consumers -- without them, the business won't be profitable, and it's locked in a death spiral of having to raise prices and losing more customers.
At some point, the music industry just might have to accept that its no longer profitable to run business in this way. Music has been around a lot longer than the recording industry, and will be around a lot longer than when the industry disappears. The sooner they get that lesson through their heads, the sooner we can stop having the exact same discussions on
pretty simple (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Load gun -- shoot foot... (Score:4, Insightful)
So now they want more money (because it's actually working) and they want to basically make it stupid for you to buy an album from iTunes because they are more expensive than the $12.99 you can pay at Walmart.
Ahh, the cartels... I won't repeat my suggestion for what everyone should do.
Re:Caveat emptor! (Score:1, Insightful)
So unless you *really* need to mass-produce CDs in batches of 10 instead of batches of 7, all's well.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:4, Insightful)
Pricing for new music should be high, older stuff could be much lower. If older stuff would be priced less (in any format), I'd buy a ton of music, but right now I don't bother.
Or independent music (Score:3, Insightful)
I know! (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean what the crap? On one hand they're trying to secure their intellectual property, and on the other they're deterring people from a format that secures their intellectual property with out-of-whack pricing?
Dumbasses! This is a strategic blunder, how do they not see it? In a weird turn of the tables, I'm mad about it because they're so obviously proliferating a problem they're trying to solve.
I should be happy, because it means the long life of easily "shareable" audio CDs, but somehow I'm not..
I Doubt Apple Wanted This to Happen (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:2, Insightful)
Could be a move to push sony (Score:4, Insightful)
Supporting Independent Music (Score:4, Insightful)
that way, when you buy a song from Magnatune, Bleep, or Audiolunchbox, you WON'T be:
1.) sending your cash to the RIAA
2.) attributing to the success of a service that fronts the RIAA, supporting the operation of tyrannous record labels with your cash
3.) supporting propietary DRM
4.) locking yourself into using iTunes or an iPod as your portable player
by opting for other services that aren't iTunes/Walmart/Sony/Rhapsody/etc.., you WILL be:
1.) sending more cash to the musicians you like
2.) attributing to the success of a service that better represents and compensates the musicians you like, without restricting how you listen to your music
3.) free to listen to your music however you want, whether it be with winamp or foobar, linux or whatever OS you use, ipod or rio karma
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Removes all doubt that the RIAA is dumb. (Score:5, Insightful)
What makes you so sure that isn't the RIAA's goal? The brick-and-mortar model is easier for the RIAA to exert control over, and the iTMS is exposing people to independent music that maybe they would have had a difficult time finding otherwise. Maybe the RIAA thinks its in their best interest to kill off online music and then go "see, online music doesn't work".
Re:bound to happen (Score:5, Insightful)
If it goes to $1.25 per track, that's going to cause my purchasing to drop off considerable. Once again, greed's running the show at the RIAA, and once again, they're executing Operation: Footbullet faster and better than anyone.
Want to complain to the top? Try dropping an email to sjobs@apple.com [mailto].
So don't buy the fucking tunes. (Score:3, Insightful)
now that they have been caught...... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Allofmp3.com (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Since when does the RIAA beg? It commands, it guilts, it sues, it takes. The RIAA (and please remember which companies comprise it so they can't hide behind that acronym) believes that it has a right to your money, because they think they control music. Even if you only hear it in passing on someone else's radio, if you hear any music it must be theirs, and you have to pay something.
They can't seem to understand that there is any use other use for P2P or CD-Rs than copying their music, so as a Canadian I pay money for CD-Rs that I've never used to copy (which is legal anyway) or distribute music. Of course, the CRIA now want it so that copying and sharing isn't legal, while also increasing the levy. I have to wonder if this price hike will be brought to Canadian music services, as we really are better off exercising the right to copy and share given to us by this damn levy.
CARTELS SETTING PRICES ARE ILLEGAL (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Allofmp3.com (Score:3, Insightful)
RIAA: Death to downloading. Stream away! (Score:5, Insightful)
The rub, of course, is that if a subscriber stop paying Napster a monthly subscription fee, she loses access to the music streams she's already paid for. It's brilliant, because in the end, the consumer gets nothing for their dollar but instant gratification. No file, no archived recording, just the experience of having heard Outkast encouraging them to "shake it like a Polaroid picture" to file away in their memory.
The RIAA adores this. It makes them happy like dogs rolling in some particularly nasty filth. They look out and see the incredible use statistics counting the users of p2p and iTunes, and they start multiplying subscription fees on top of those numbers. It's the best deal possible for them, because they manage to make money by selling us no real assets.
But iTunes style stores, where users are given individual copies of songs to keep and own, and use in perpetuity for a one-time fee? The RIAA hates this. It makes them sad, like a pet owner discovering that his dog has rolled in some particularly nasty filth. Instead of a recurring revenue stream that's locked into continuing to pay for the RIAA's existing products for life, each consumer instead is a fair deal. They get songs for a low one-time fee, they're able to get their music a la carte without having to buy dozens of filler tracks, and they're still offered the instant gratification that is the only real selling point the streaming model has to offer. The RIAA, in turn, is forced to continue producing new product at a high enough quality that they can continue to sell it to customers.
Once you understand this, it's easy to see what the RIAA is doing: They're trying to shut down iTunes.
By raising the cost of songs to $1.25, they're breaking the magic $1 price point. Anything under a buck, well hell, that's just a candy bar. Why not buy it? But $1.25, that's a 20oz. bottle of soda, a purchase that must be considered a little more carefully. They've broken the psychological barrier to impulse purchases that $.99 magically hovers below.
By raising the price of full albums on iTunes to be equivalent to the cost of a physical CD bought in the store, the RIAA looks on the surface like they're creating a financial incentive to go and buy the album at a music store. But we all know that's not how this will work out.
What will happen is that iTunes' sales will drop, but they won't be met with a commeasurate increase in sales at music stores. The RIAA knows that people accustomed to the iTunes Music Store will return to illegal acquisition of music via filesharing before they'll go to the store and buy it.
In fact, they're counting on it, because once the iTunes music store is dead, they can say, "See? We tried, we put our best foot forward, but it just didn't work. These pirates aren't interested in paying." Then the lawyers can go to town, until there is no technological nor legal recourse available to escape their stranglehold on recorded music.
It's not only evil, it's fucking brilliant.
Someone show me a breakdown please... (Score:2, Insightful)
I want to see the breakdown of the $0.99 song and of the $1.29 song
$0.05 - Artist
$0.10 - Production
$0.10 - Advertising
$0.05 - Distributor (apple, sony, etc that distribute the actual content to the consumer)
$0.69 - Crappy executives that are earning about 69x more than they are actually worth.
I want to know what the fixed and variable portions of the price breakdown are.
Once industries learn that the consumer is not a babbling idiot I think the world will get a lot nicer. Treat me like a logical person. Look I understand that if I love Artist X, and everyone downloads artist X's music for free, and Artist X doesn't see a profit, Artist X is probably not going to make any more albums for me to enjoy.It *IS* that simple.
The revolution I seek is not for FREE things, but it is to appropriately compensate those doing the work and cut out the fat cats of the RIAA and execs that just live off the fat of the land. I'm not here to shaft the artist at all, I'm here to shaft the leeches that are parasites clinging to and feeding off of the actual artists. The artist deserves money, the producers, the sound workers, all deserve to get compensated for their work, but I'd venture to say that most of the other costs are not really value adding to the product we receive.
Love me, hate me. I want a world when you get what you deserve.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
they should've done it long ago, but now is the time that they finally buy Apple Records outright, and end the occasional lawsuits, and long established contract that prevents Apple Computer from entering the Music Recording Industry.
They should buy Apple Records, which would grant them the right to sign any and all free-agent and upcoming bands to the Apple label, distribute their music on ITMS, and they would sweep the industry because they could pay the artists ~50% royalties as opposed to the .2% - 12% the RIAA offers these artists. Apple would clean up, the musicians would clean up, and the RIAA would either be forced to reform and compete, or (I wish, I wish, I wish) finally die.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Really? Funny how no one even mentions how much money the ARTISTS are getting out of the deal.
Price of song 0.99
Record label gets -0.70
Credit card fees -0.20
Apple's cut -0.10
--------
Artist royalty (0.01)
this makes sense (Score:2, Insightful)
Brilliant.
Excuuuuuse me? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:True but Re:Allofmp3.com (Score:4, Insightful)
AllOfMP3 and other grey market Russian MP3 sites do not pay them anything at all. Maybe, just maybe they got a few pennies from the sale of the CDs that these companies bought to master their catalogs, but I really doubt that as well.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Typically, artists get $1/CD, or about 1/16th of the selling price (after the labels recoup all sorts of insane costs). Assuming the same distribution of money, the artists *should* be getting somewhere between 99/16 and 70/16 or between 6 and 4 cents per song (depending on their contract).
Jerks (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:And quoting the article... (Score:3, Insightful)
Supply of copies is unlimited, disturbution could be considered supply I guess. But I am sure Apple has a system that scales quite well.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Oh, please (Score:5, Insightful)
Joining the RIAA Boycott (Score:3, Insightful)
If you need to have a song from the majors, then download it off the net for free. Period. Downhill Battle [downhillbattle.org] has some suggestions for staying below the RIAA lawsuit radar when running your P2P client. But better yet, just stop listening to RIAA music and get involved in the indie scene. Make it a change in your mindset, to eschew the marketing hype and think for yourself.
Re:Supporting Independent Music (Score:2, Insightful)
Cool, let me know which independent bands are as good as The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, U2, REM, Neil Young, etc.
Most of the independent stuff I've heard has been mediocre, so I look forward to discovering which of it can make me forget my White Album or Dark Side of the Moon CDs!
Carl
Question... (Score:2, Insightful)
Basically, If I actually had the skill to write good music, produced my own tracks and wanted to sell them for $0.99 on their site, would there be a way?
If so, maybe apple should consider a way to promote those artists a little more then the well known ones that are $0.26 more expensive.
Anyway...
The reason they want to kill the iTMS... (Score:5, Insightful)
The RIAA is working very hard to keep their customers "in the dark" about other bands. Sure, the odd person may go "indie" but they don't want a mass of people to make something "indie" into "mainstream". I.e. take the "impressionable teenager that listens to what other teenagers listen to" market.
After all, I'm sure there's more than enough music out there for me to listen to it 24/7 for the rest of my life without hearing anything twice, most of them non-RIAA (a lot of crappy ones too, but many good I'm sure). The iTMS could show it all.
It's not the distribution channel they fear. It's the exposure to all sorts of music you can get through the iTMS. Imagine word-of-mouth going around "Check you band X on iTMS, they're really good". With instant previews, instant satisfaction, instant spreading the word, instant fame.
Suddenly a band that never would have reached "critical mass" without the RIAA before, could make it big. Get your music up on iTMS, hit the "hip" people, the trendsetters, and you don't need a huge record contract, retail stores or a media blitz to make people hear and buy your song.
You've got no problem with a million people suddenly wanting your song, no scale-up problems, no production delays, no distribution bottlenecks. Nothing. World-wide (well, not yet but iTMS will get there).
That is why the RIAA will hold the online stores in a chokehold. Killing them would make them seem bad "they won't deliver what the customers want", too loose could shatter their hold on the market. Expect the DRM to become more and more anal.
Then blame the consumer for not wanting it. "We tried to sell it online". It's perfect. They get to keep their profitable CD sales, the consumers look like the bad guys and Apple the "friendly" that really only wants to sell iPods. Which btw is quite happy as long as they're the biggest *online* shop, making most people buy iPods.
Kjella
extortion ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Never Bought, and Never Will (Score:3, Insightful)
My car player only does MP3, but AAC is a way better format. I can create both, and I can create the possible quality of MP3 for that environment.
Raw bits let me create unprotected digital files and use them any way I want, and this is exactly what God intended us to do with information, dammit.
iTunes -- Who Cares.
Comparison to movie sales? It doesn't add up. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know about the majors, but I interned for an indie label a few years ago and that is exactly what they did. It was written into their contract with the band and everything. The owner was, in fact, proud of how badly he was screwing the folks who signed with him.
Re:AllOfMp3.com? (Score:3, Insightful)
Their range is pretty good, and the site "feels" nicely put together (although it can sometimes be a little slow at peak times). They provide a download manager for free (called AllOfMP3 Explorer) which does clever stuff like automatically renaming and filing tracks, setting up your chosen options for ID3 tagging, and validating your downloads (and correcting any errors) using checksums. You can, of course, just download using standard HTTP if you'd prefer, but I've found it pretty handy.
I initially assumed this was some sort of scam, but the general level of support and professionalism shown makes me suspect there's a fairly large business behind it, and they seem fairly confident that it's legal, at least in Russia.
From a moral standpoint, I'd rather use a service where I knew that a reasonable amount of money went to artists, and I'd be willing to pay substantially more if one was set up... of course, the same criticism could be applied to the current major labels as well, who aren't exactly fair with their "clients" either.
I used to buy a reasonable number of CDs (and I still do from indie labels) but the major labels have repeatedly shown that they're not interested in a a fair deal - they just want everything they can get. I don't feel too bad about returning the attitude.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
First, 10 cents out of every 99 is a very good profit margin, considering that Apple does not do anything other than distribute the tracks. In fact, that's an excellent profit margin
Dunno, but you should go track him down and find him to get some....
Out of that dime comes the R and D of iTunes for two platforms, the server farm, the massive pipes to said farm, the store itself and the ripping of the tracks for the store. And you think they're rolling in profits after paying that? Not likely....
You've got it all wrong... (Score:5, Insightful)
Legitimate Article? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not sure this is explicitly about greed... (Score:5, Insightful)
New methods of distribution are a grave threat (literally) to their necessity, which in both business and nature is a swift road to extinction - unless those streams either emerge under strict controls, or are addressable through business or legal tactics.
Internet music distribution is a bear of a problem to these people. There is no specific competitor to be bought out or sued, or specific technology to buy into; the fight against Napster underscored this point clearly.
Furthermore, their entire livelihood - marketing and distribution of music - has morphed over the past decade into obsolesence. "Push" marketing - the only kind RIAA members know about - never fails to fail on the net, and "distribution management" is something that software can handle with far less overhead than RIAA is demanding from artists in meatspace.
RIAA supporting music downloads is like Bush campaigning for Kerry. If legal music downloads take off, RIAA dies. It isn't any more complex than that. The net undermines all of their profit schemes.
Notice how popular legal music downloads are getting? If they get too popular, who'll need RIAA? RIAA has been pushing against illegal alternatives, so they can't very well opt out without validating most every argument put against them as to their motive. So what other option do they have to curb the burgeoning frenzy? If legal downloads make overall music sales go up, what reason will they have to petition Congress or judges?
IMO they're trying to make downloads so unattractive an option that most people either go back to illegal downloads or CD buying. In the case that it fails to stop legal downloads or increase CD sales, they still make a lot of money. It's a no-lose plan.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the RIAA can say, "You see, all this time people have been saying that it's the convenience of an electronic format they want" (which has not been our argument), "and when we offer it to them, electronic purchases are only 5% of the physical sales. These Internet music buyers are just pirates who are not happy to pay for music even when we give it to them the way they want," (which they're not).
Good show RIAA. Red herrings for everyone.
Re:Oh, please (Score:4, Insightful)
That's ok, I can do it.
Here's a partial list for your boys, Led Zeppelin:
Don't get me wrong, I love Led Zeppelin. But this old-geezer crap about music these kids listen to today sucking is the same old-geezer crap that's been spouted by old geezers since at least the 30s. Do you think maybe it's just a matter of perspective?
Getting worked up over nothing (Score:1, Insightful)
You've got it all wrong... (Score:3, Insightful)
And when distribution costs are nil, what incentive will there be for any content producer to go through an XXAA member to get their art on the market?
When distro costs are nil, what's to stop minor-league competitors from jumping in and offering less-restrictive competition that would be more attractive to consumers and therefore producers?
Distribution is RIAA's raison d'être. Monopoly control over it is the only reason any producers put up with the majority fees on sale, the content manipulation and other bullshit. When they lose that, the house of cards comes down, DRM or no DRM.
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:5, Insightful)
If that's what they're teaching in this mystical "Economics 101" class, I really don't want to take it.
Apple's $0.10 on the dollar is not profit, it's revenue. As another poster pointed out that is before all of the costs associated with the iTunes store (development, servers, promotion, etc). Apple has said they make no money on iTunes.
Dell's 6% profit is mostly profit. Although there are marketing and other considerations to take into account the main costs (hardware, software, assembly, customer support) are all paid for by the sale of the item. Dell's focus, like most comptuer manfucturers, is now on goods with higher profit margins. Examples of these are: extended warranties, printer consumables (HP's most profitable market), business services, etc.
Perhaps they teach this in Economics 102?
What the hell are you smoking?
Actually, I rarely smoke. And on the rare occasion that I do, I usually smoke Djarum cloves. Gives me a nice little buzz and they smell quite nice. Thanks for asking. Any other questions about my personal consumption habits that you may want to know about? Or would you like to tell me what you learned in other amazing classes like "Art 101", "Computer Science 101", or "Pottery 101"?
This is how the RIAA plans to kill competition (Score:4, Insightful)
If downloading music costs the same as a store bought CD ( or more ) most people will let the record companies do the work and give them a nice
"store bought" package.
End of legal downloadable music.
Additionally, by temporarily allowing legal downloadable music to flourish ( in combination with their lawsuits for illegal downloading ) they have moved many people away and out of the habit of stealing music over the internet.
If more people start stealing music over the internet again the RIAA can play martyr with an improved public image. "Hey, we let legal downloads happen and these people insist on stealing anyway".
Steve
Re:Caveat emptor! (Score:3, Insightful)
Face it, if you're "investing" in a DRM music collection, you own nothing. You have no idea what your access to that music will look like in 10 years.
Re:AllOfMp3.com? (Score:2, Insightful)
That being said, the allofmp3 site sure *feels* legitimate, give or take the odd translation oddity from russian on the english site. It's a clean interface, well set up, and not full of ads or pop ups or whatnot. I did pay via paypal. Altho that's not my first choice, I do trust them with my credit card a little more than some random russian who-knows-what running the website.
The only thing that set of bells in my head was their "Wanted" program. Basically, if there's a CD out there they want but don't have, you get credit if you use their program to upload a high quality digital version of it to them. That can't be legal, unless they then go out and obtain their copyright after?
In a nutshell, if they have what I need, I'm now passing on the less-legal ways to download mp3s. So far, I've been impressed with these guys. I do wonder how long it will be before the RIAA trys to shut them down.
Re:Load gun -- shoot foot... (Score:3, Insightful)
Point of order - technically it's not a 'bait and switch'. It's a 'jacking up the price now that you're hooked', which is different. Bait and switch would be advertising the store as .99 per track, and then adding a .25 per track "handling fee" or something. However, anything you've purchased for the .99 price is still yours, so there's no 'switch'.
-T
Re:Allofmp3.com (Score:3, Insightful)
Why ?
Other option
In algebra, a number is only defined by it's value. Location has nothing to do with it. A 6 in the US is EXACTLY the same (in NO way you can make a distinction within the laws of algebra) as a 6 in Japan. Just think what the consequences would be if that were not the case. An mp3 is really a big number. If I were to ask you the difference between the mp3 on the disk in Russia and the mp3 on your disk, what would you answer ? Then I would test your answer. I would print both mp3's on a white piece of paper and I would ask you to point to the mp3 on your disk. If you really have a difference you should easily be able to do that. Therefore, there is no copy of that mp3. It is simply represented in 2 locations.
Then there is the router problem. Once an internet stream gets into a router, which "copies" it onto another wire. Where does the "original" copy go ? Into oblivion. If that is a copy, routers are obviously big criminals, copying every bit that goes through them. Why is this significant ? Most non-core routers are simply a normal computer (they are as normal as any other computer with 2 network interfaces)
Now how does the air work ? Sound waves are created in the following fashion. A single "bit" of sound is a localized drop in pressure. The actual particles of air are not significantly displaced by the soundwave. Therefore the localized drops and heights in pressure must be copied (evidence: despite the speed of sound, there are no constant winds at speeds of 1000 miles per hour).
Moreover, the human brain cannot process differences in pressure. The human skin can, and the human ear can (a lot more precise). While there is no doubt that the actual experience of music takes place in the brain of a person. Now your brain lies in an environment that is protected from a lot of things, and your body will fight to equalize pressure in your head until your heart fysically fails (you can die from this process). So there is no way for "original" sounds to ever make it to the Brain. Therefore you are experiencing a copy of the original sound. Copying a copyrighted work is not allowed ! You pirate !
Re:Leave it to RIAA (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm not an American, but I would like to point out that voting for people based on a single position is stupid.
So you're pro-tech? Fine. But you also want to put something in the constitution that would take away rights. In fact, it seems like the only reason you're against the DMCA is because it affects you personally.
I can't of course deny your right to have those views, but anyone who blindly votes for you based on your opinion on the DMCA is an idiot. Remember, that text on the FSF t-shirt says "Free Software, Free Society", not "Free Software".
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:2, Insightful)
For the record my own smoking choice is a nice Don Tomas robusto with a stiff drink, all of about once a year. Never took art 101, CS 101 was a lame-o business computing class (CS 162 was C++), and there was a two year wait list on metals 101.
Oh, who didn't see this coming? (Score:3, Insightful)
The Post is hardly a bastion of good reporting (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Sony Connect launched this week (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple has already denied these claims. Don't talk as if the price is 1.25 right now.
Re:Allofmp3.com perfectly legal in the United Stat (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some songs on allofmp3.com that aren't available on iTunes, so it's very tempting... but...
Is there any reason I should think that Museekster.com [museekster.com] has any credibility? IP law is a convoluted mess right now, and this guy doesn't exactly sound like a lawyer. I also couldn't help but notice the disclaimer [museekster.com] on the site:
Pretty standard fare given our lawsuit-crazed society, I suppose, but still...
That allofmp3.com [allofmp3.com] offers Beatles and Metallica albums seems troublesome, too, and I'm not sure that the explanation [museekster.com] put forth by Museekster.com holds water:
Uh... okaaay...
I'd like to believe this is all nice and legal, but the cynic in me can't make the leap. (Damn!)
Re:Sony still 99 cents? (Score:3, Insightful)
Not the way Sony sees it. Sony sees funny.
Back in the early 80's, Sony was one of the companies that wanted a "tax" on cassette tapes, to make up for the money they "lost" (more accurately, failed to make) due to people taping albums.
They wanted me to pay more for my Sony tape that I used in my Sony tape deck to record my Sony albums by Sony artists. They saw nothing wrong with this. Luckily, others did.
For all you non-accountants... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not sure this is explicitly about greed... (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, they've been harping about the decline in CD sales for a few years now (while releasing less records). As music downloading continues to climb, both legal and illegal, they will see CD sales slip even further.
Once CD sales slip further, they get to go Congress and bitch/whine/moan about 'pirates' and push through more DMCA-style laws (mandatory DRM laws come to mind). Congress will bend over backwards because of all the bribes^Wcampaign contributions.
Part of this whole system is making sure legal Internet downloads don't get too popular. If they do, that can be used as an explination for a decline in CD sales. This is the LAST thing they want.
Re:Make RIAA irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:You've got it all wrong... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:RTFA (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Please... kill me now (Score:2, Insightful)
Suck it up and stop being such a grammar Nazi.
Re:Another idea; call their bluff (Score:3, Insightful)
What can they do about it? How about cut Apple's right to distribute their music, and just let all of the other music services that have been springing up overnight vie for Apple's former position as #1.
Apple may be the best, but don't think for a second that they have that much power. It is a very delicate balance. Apple has the goodwill of the people, the design, and currently the userbase, but the labels have the music, and they can revoke Apple's powers at any time they choose.
Best. Troll. Story. Ever. (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Load gun -- shoot foot... (Score:3, Insightful)
The way I see it, If I figure out a way to sell someone else's product people aren't buying anymore -- at my own expense, I deserve some credit.
I was so amazed while the Napster craze was going on. Nobody in the music industry could agree what to do, if anything. The music industry got their asses handed to them by a 16 year old kid.
Anyway, fast-forward to the creation of ITMS. Apple does what the music industry should have figured out how to do 4 years earlier, and the RIAA wants to leech off Apple's and other companies' hard, innovative work. These guys are truly parasites.