Now that the windfall of customers changing from vinyl to CDs is over, record companies are looking for new ways to extract more money from records buyers in the form of copy protected CDs. I notice on the inside of the jewel case of a CD I have just bought at FNAC, I am advised that I can download usable copies of music I have already fucking paid for at www.musicfromemi.com.
I know this isn’t a new thing, but having paid NT$439 for N.E.R.D.'s album Fly or Die, I wonder how much more the record companies expect to squeeze out of me for the privilege of putting it on my computer ?
Or perhaps they expect me to carry my entire record collection between home and the office and purchase a CD player of their choice for each location I wish to play this CD ? IT actually fucking says, and I quote: “On some equipment, for example car CD players playback problems may be encountered” - WHAT ?
Anyway, I hope all record companies go bust tomorrow - especially EMI. Fuck you all very, very, much.
The useless piece of silver and red plastic sits on my desk, as I download the entire album from Kazza.
Which is perhaps what I should have done in the first place.
What say you to that Matthew? I often play CDs in the car, so should I now be paying the company twice over for the same music? Hold on – do they even make “special” CDs that will play in the car? No? So now what? No music at all in the car? But wait a minute – my car CD player cost more than NT$30,000, but of course I can sell it to EMI/Sony/et al. Can’t I? After all, by rendering it useless, they’ve basically stolen that money from me, I’d say.
I now have 2687 songs on my new 40 gb iPod. Many of these are long live Grateful Dead tunes (the longest is 1 hour and 13 minutes). I have 27 gb remaining.
Virtually all of the music I listen to is music that I have purchased previously on 8 track, vinyl, casette and CD media. I have no feelings of guilt for downloading songs that I no longer have due to the phasing out of 8 tracks, the warping and or scratching of vinyl, the tangling and or breaking of casette tape and the loss of CDs.
Hah. Join the club, Hex. My personal crusade against the labels is in year 6. I don’t buy any CD’s anymore, and don’t give a damn cent to any online music buying service. Now…I know I’ll get flak for this but…
…I guess you could say that I am one of “those” people that the recording industry and the RIAA are fighting against. The ones with thousands upon thousands of downloaded songs on their computer. Sorry…but until the companies stop trying to milk the consumer for every dollar they have, I am not buying anything. I will go to my beggars markets and download whatever I want. The RIAA doesn’t see that its crusade against the file sharer is unwinnable. For every Kazaa or Napster out there, there are 5 Soulseeks or iMesh’s. They can go through one by one and try to shut each one down for all I care. As soon as they do, 3 more will spawn from the death of 1.
Now, Hollywood’s approach to the whole online issue is very good. The RIAA and their lackeys should take a page out of Tinseltown’s book. Don’t alienate the consumers by going after them like bloodthirsty, greedy sons of bitches…but create pay-for-play services and foster their growth.
P.S. - CD codes, like DVD codes, are worthless. They have been cracked, no matter how impossible some make it sound. We, the internet underground, will ALWAYS be one step ahead of the greedy assholes of the entertainment industry.
[quote]Virtually all of the music I listen to is music that I have purchased previously on 8 track, vinyl, casette and CD media. I have no feelings of guilt for downloading songs that I no longer have due to the phasing out of 8 tracks, the warping and or scratching of vinyl, the tangling and or breaking of casette tape and the loss of CDs.
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Has it come to this? Even the educated, even those working in the field of intellectual property protection are stealing? Am I really the last holdout?
You don’t like a product, or a service, you don’t buy it, or you complain to the company. Some deal you guys have made: sell your integrity for a bit of free music.
As for the high price, cry me a river. Some of you guys think nothing of spending NT200-300 on a beer for christ sake.
I see their nice little ride coming to an end soon. Some of my favorite CDs have started to get the spots that ruin them, and I am expected to buy them again?
What bugs me is the disappearance of the singles market. I’m a singles hound and would gladly pay for them. While the recording industry says singles don’t make money since people can just download them, the other barrell is they stopped selling a lot of them because they cut into album sales. But I don’t want to buy a whole album for just one song. :raspberry:
[quote=“sandman”]What say you to that Matthew?[/quote]I say that if you’ve bought it you should be able to listen to it on whatever you what, be it your CD player, car stereo, MP3 player or computer. The EMI system is pretty bad, because it put errors on the disc which anti-skip systems use to reseek, causing skipping, even if the auto-skip is turned off I can hear definate clicking on those CD’s. I certainly don’t condone protected CD, niether does Philips who don’t allow them to put the CD logo on them. But would you do with people like SteveZeAuthor and Taiwan Psycho around ?
I can walk down Bade road and see pirates openly flogging software published by my company. Oh the irony of being told that I earn too much by someone earning twice as much as me, and it’s therefore ok to steal from me.
1.) the Grateful Dead have ALWAYS permitted people to tape Dead shows.
2.) many of the tunes on my iPod were loaded directly from my own CD collection.
3.) virtually all of the other tunes now on my iPod are tunes that I once owned on 8 track, vinyl and or CD media.
4.) The courts have decided that if person A purchases a record and allows his friend to make a copy of the same for his own use, this constitutes fair use and is permissible. File sharing is the same thing, but on a much larger scale. But, its the same thing. If it isn’t OK, then they should change the law.
As I stated, Sony Music is owned by Sony, and Sony produces and sells blank tapes and CDs. Why are they selling these blanks?
My records are still in fine condition. Some CDs I bought merely a few years ago have deteriorated and are worthless. I am on my second “Help!” and second “Rattle and Hum”.
My parents’ copy of “There Goes my Everything” (Elvis) is nearly 40 years old and going strong.
Delighted that we have now replicated our record collections on CD, the record companies are upset that we are replicating our CD collections on our computers. Why ? Because they cannot profit the third time.
Clearly the manufacturers of computer equipment are going to have to pay a fee to the performing arts union to cover the royalties due - much in the way radio stations pay now. You’ll never collect the money directly from the end users. But it needs revolutionary thinking, not penalising honest people.
Fukkem. I’ll never buy another CD. They can stick them up their bit fat collective arse.
EMI, FNAC, N.E.R.D., enjoy your NT$439. It’s the last you’ll see from me while you carry on this nonsense. I have no problem giving you my money in the future when you wise up and stop treating your genuine customers like criminals.
As copyprotected CDs do not comply with the standard that’s not a surprise. My advise: boycott those CDs.
Maybe that’s an American law. In Germany you can make a copy for own use only but you must still be in possession of the original. Thus “tunes that I once owned” or copying to/by friends is a big no-no there.
Not sure. It’s certainly tolerated though; analog audio and compressed = crap sound, i.e. the major concern nowadays is the possibility of unlimited digital copying as this can reproduce the original without loss of quality.
Thus there may be a difference between digital and analog copies. AFAIK the first digital copy of a e.g. CD is allowed for private use but no further (digital) copies.
If I recall correctly DAT tape decks had this function, i.e. a flag was set when a recording was made so that copies of a copy weren’t possible. Theoretically at least.
It’s not the same thing when the scale becomes so much larger. A single family can purchase one piece of software. A company with multiple users cannot. Same with renting a VCD or video. You can display it at home for your family and a few friends but not for anything that could be construed as a public viewing even if that viewing is free. A teacher cannot buy one textbook and photocopy it for the entire class.
If you are simply copying your own CD’s onto your ipod, I wouldn’t consider that stealing. I thought you were suggesting that because you once owned this music it gave you the right to download it for free from a file sharing site.
As for changing the law, when they do change it then we can all download with a clear conscience. Until then we should obey the laws even as we fight to have these laws reflect modern times. I believe you said something to the same affect in the Gay Marriage thread. Or do you really think pop music is important enough to justify civil disobediance?
Only the scale is different. Otherwise, its the same thing.
Some of the tunes are downloaded. But I have owned virtually all of them previously.
No. I am saying that they will have to change the law if they want file sharing to be illegal. It is either fair use or it isn’t. I will accept either decision. But currently, the cases relevant stated that sharing music for noncommercial use is permissible.
If the scale at which sharing now takes place is an issue, then change the law. Until then, I will download with a clear conscience.
Actually, they’ve been changing the laws in the opposite direction. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act restricted the old “fair use” system. Then there was the “Mouse Protection Act” which extended copyright – once upon a time, it was 50 years, then 70, and now it’s out to 90, IIRC. The nickname was because Disney would benefit so strongly from it – Mickey was about to become public-domain.
Corporate interests are destroying fair use so they can make a few more bucks out of their ancient holdings. The original idea was to allow individual artists to make a living off their work; nowadays, corporate vampires want to control that work for all eternity.
You don’t buy the music anyway, I though what you bought was a licence to listen to the music or something. Anyone know what it is you actually buy ? So I have a hundred LPs in the UK. They’re mine. Do I have to actually be in possession of them, or is title to them enough ? And so on…
http://bt.etree.org/ One of the top torrent download sites is also a 100% legal download site. It’s legal because bands like the Grateful Dead and Phish, Ben Harper, Blues Traveler, and the Dave Matthews Band allow fans to trade recordings of live concerts.
If you’re looking for some good free recordings of live music, just download using bittorrent, convert the shn to a wav file, and smile.
