State refuses to spy on students for the RIAA

I agree that Mr. Dan Asti has focused his anger in the wrong direction. Ironically, he's being "ripped off" by the exact same entity, and should see the same enemy as the consumers. Dan, your small checks are not the result of file-sharing; they are the result of poor market control and corporate greed. When you put 20% of the *total* work into a project and its distribution, you should not take home 0.1% of its profit! Imagine if you got paid proportionally to your work -- then, even if 90% of distribution fell to file-sharing, you would still take home 20x more money! ([100%-90%] of 20% = 2%; 2%/0.1%=20)

We should be on the same side, fighting the same battle. Besides, you aren't even seeing the same problem as us "consumers" and "sympathizers." First, there's a huge difference between saying that thieves should get away with their crimes and saying that the cure is worse than the disease (i.e., spying, monopolization, overbroad investigation, and corporate legislation hurt everyone, and are not worth fixing sharing servers). Second, the battle is not for the right to share with total freedom, but with SOME freedom. It's become a battle of black vs. white, when all we asked for was a shade of grey. CDs are held to ridiculous standards of sale that could never fit any other media. The reality is that when you blend the few that break the rules 100% with the companies that give us 0%, we all wind up with a light shade of grey in the end. But there are better ways to reach such an end. :) More importantly, it requires a constant fight to keep them from erecting a permanent wall around their extreme. Sorry if I got too metaphorical, there :P

Three things about the UofO President, Dave Frohnmayer:

1. He's an attorney

2. He was the attorney general for the State of Oregon before becoming President of UofO

3. He was the Oregon AG that stopped the Rajneeshes when they were trying to poison people, assassinate judges, take over Antelope, OR, etc., (you know, enjoy their religious freedoms w/o interference from the government ;^}

He's been in some tough fights before!

The consumer's assuming that the musician's making the money, the musician's assuming that the consumers are rich and, in reality, neither is true. Most music doesn't have any value except the transient value from its performance. The recording industry makes its money by regulating the flow of product and creaming off the bulk of the value, a situation that has never been to either the musician's or the consumer's benefit but it was something we put up in the days of proper records. Now we don't need this, we can do direct to consumer, but the recording companies are unwilling to give up their lucrative business and most musicians haven't figured out how to work the new model yet.

I still buy CDs, BTW. I need them for reference, I like the notes that come with the recording and, most importantly, its a vote of confidence in the performer. I don't buy the mass market throwaway music, though.....its mostly specialized classical recordings (which, thanks to new recording and reproduction tools can be made and sold by smaller, lean and efficient outfits -- more money to the workers, less to the parasites!).

If more people changed jobs because they were unhappy about their pay, employers would have to pay a LOT more attention to what they paid people. I started on £10k at the beginning of my career, and my last contract netted me £105k last year, just ten years later. And I've *NEVER* had a pay raise from any employer - I simply walked when I was unhappy with my pay, and got used to negotiating for what I wanted before I signed any contract.

I really have zero sympathy for you: While on the one hand you are sponsoring a 99% tax on your work by tolerating your label's exploitative policies, you're then also whining about it. Please, just do yourself a BIG favour and quit the business. If every artist did this, the labels would soon be panicking and offering MUCH more than a measly 1-2% share of the profits, thus making it more worth your while to work for them.

Or go it alone and do what others have done: Sell directly to the public and cut out the middleman. Sell for 10% of what the labels are charging, and make 10x your current income. Isn't technology wonderful?

Dan gets royalties from his past work. That would be sweet. The minute I stop slaving away to feed my family in our minature apartment is the minute my family starts starving, because despite me working myself into the ground over all these years I get nothing, a big fat zilch, from all the work I've done in the past. Maybe I should become a student so that I can afford iPods and Alienware gear instead of borrowing time on other peoples PCs. RIAA people need to take a ride in the real world.

the riaa can go to hell nobody should pay $18 dollars for a cd with only 2 good songs on it everyone in the world uses ipod or an mp3 player nobody uses cds anymore i have not bought a cd in 10 years and i never will again the reason i stoped buying cds is i hear a report that they were going to put copy guard to stop copying the cd to your computer i daid i will not support anything to do with drm i will never buy any bul-ray
or any dvd anymore i will record it when it comes out on hbo cinmax or cable i will record songs from the radio for free and my cable has 55 music stations to hook up to line input
right to my computer to record thousands of songs for free the riaa should get a real job the riaa has to change with the times or be out of luck and know very few people will ever buy cds again all music should be sold on the internet for $1 per song with no drm of anykind i perdict
in 10 years from now cds will no longer be sold anywere and if the music people dont get in on this they will be looking to find other work mabe cleaning houses for a living

never heard of u.

1, if u want to make more sales, reduce sales prices of cds. they arent "$1 each", but perhaps should be

2, research suggests that, (and i agree), sharing from dloads actually leads to people discovering more stuff and buying more....

3, etc.






Dan,

If you feel you are getting short changed then find another job. You shouldn't have to work long hours to make ends meat. You seem to have more of a gripe about the industry you work in rather than someone downloading music. And by the way, while reading your post I downloaded three songs that I did not pay for. I wonder if you worked on these?

You're getting tenths of a percent in royalties? It's your record label that's shafting you. If you're getting 0.5% royalties on something, and sales go down 20% due to P2P networks, then you've lost 0.1%. Your record label has, on the other hand, cost you 99.5%. Who's the demon here?

Your comments about the Alienware laptops and Mommy and Daddy saving the college kids is amusing considering that you were complaining about the inaccurate perceptions of musicians being universally wealthy. There are plenty of dirt poor college students out there.

- just imagine if your checks [sic, Ed.] got smaller while your work became more used and available

Ever drove a truck? lol
i'll match that pain dollar for dollar any day.

Seriously thou, Can't blame the mindwashed masses for whats put on MTV, i would suggest yet another "reality" show showing how poor you all really are so that the scrubbed cleaned of all common sense see what you go through every day. 

If the music industry keeps making its own look like the are rolling in the dough every day and their faces get splattered across the tabloids for being mind numbed idiots with millions who can't afford underwear. why blame the college student for buying into it. 
If they were that smart to begin with they wouldn't need college would they?

Talking about all college students being rich with ipods iphones and iballs who have back packs full of aliens with a bottomless platinum card

Whos view is tad screwed up? 

Last i checked, the majority of them don't have what you think they have and wish they did. Seems you need to check your own facts as well.



Aren't we impressed with ourselves mr 'Dan Asti'
Talk about silly overlengthy overdramatic over-BS posts.

I work long hard hours reading webpages, and guess what I GET PAYED NOTHING!! :o
I'm assuming someone will be arrested over that shortly.

I believe Mr. Asti has found a simple target for his anger- much as we have found a target in the RIAA. 

What needs to be recognized is that we have a music industry that (like the government) has become overgrown to the point of being non-functional. The 'system' has grown so large that it no longer serves, but instead, demand that we serve IT. 

There's something fundamentally wrong with paying $18 for a CD that you never technically own, has no replacement warranty of any sort and which is shackled with every form of inconvenience technically possible to prevent you from freely enjoying it. 

What we're seeing here is society correcting a situation that should never have been allowed to develop. Dan- most of us wouldn't steal 10 cents from you, but can your industry say the same to us? 

Guess what? A lot of us also work long hours for little pay- because someone overseas is willing to do our jobs for A LOT LESS. 

I wish a law could be passed that mandates that MY business be successful. 

Stop trying to legislate your way into profitability and adapt to the market. The working class is forced to do it; as should the music industry. Nothing personal.

Being that I'm someone who actually works in the recording industry - meaning I actually "record" music - I see this all from an entirely different angle. 

Let me first say that I'm appalled by the case and verdict that was brought against that woman for $222,000. 

Nobody I personally know is anything but angy about how this unfolded. She wasn't someone who was using ultra high quality audio with album artwork and she wasn't profiting from the music. She should not have been targeted IMO.

I think most of your readers see it through the prism of; "the artist are rich enough, the company is rich enough so screw them..." 

Most people see it this way but the vast majority of people who earn points and percentages get paid in very small amounts and don't live anything resembling the "rock star" life. 

We work extremely long hard hours and have dedicated their lives to this art and the royalty checks we get are something that represents the appreciation of a lifetime in creating the best music we possibly can.

I worked harder and interned longer hours than any doctor just to get my foot in the door. 

Certain albums, songs or projects licensed will net me $50 a month. Seems like nothing right? But those 15, 20 hour days (that it takes to complete a project, or, uh, "free download") add up over a career/lifetime. The majority of us get our pay in these type of $50-$150 per project small monthy checks. 

If the song is licensed to a tv series, album sales, etc.. We're sometimes talking 10ths of percents. There is so much hardwork put into those songs by modestly living people with mouths to feed and kids that depend on us. 

People just don't seem to understand how many people count on the accumulation of royalty checks. They see "MTV Cribs" and base their decision to take the music for free on that. 

It kills me to look at these file servers where 10,000 songs are thrown around and downloaded by people. 

I've even seen software and services where people charge or require you to do something to download my work. 

People are using my work for their profit and I especially want them dealt with. "Share"? Well, ok... If you want to share set up a website and run a podcast. There is a difference between that and ultra high quality audio and the complete artwork coming in a zipped folder. 

Please tell me these American College kids can't afford to pay $1 for a song when daddy and mommy dearest can buy them their Iphone to listen to their "free" music and their new Alienware lappy to run their "sharing" server on. 

Like I said before, most of us in the industry hated to see the RIAA lawyers go after that woman. 

That was inexcusable and embarrassing but I have little sympathy for someone who runs these "sharing" servers. I wouldn't mind if it was low quality mp3 (64 - 128 - even cassette tape) ok by me. Burn a cd for a friend - that's fine too. But people are running mass scale theft and distribution. 

It's at high quality and why pay for it when you have the exact same copy that left the mastering room? Maybe someone can be open-minded enough to apply it to their own (hard) work - just imagine if your checks got smaller while your work became more used and available.

Forgive me if it's hard to shed a tear for mommy and daddy's little college kids and their "rights" to "share" my hard work "freely". 

I've got to pay the electric bill, get a microphone back from the repair shop, test it, set it up and get the best possible vocal tracked and edited in the next 4 hours. 

Then I have to mix all night so I have something quality to use to for noonish tomorrow when I have players coming in to finalize the violins, guitars and piano. I hope these "poor" students aren't too inconvenienced. I should have something new for them a.s.a.p. [Very eloquent, Ed. So why are we forced to suffer from DRM?]

I wish the RIAA would just die, there no helping the artists at all. Really all there doing is padding there own bottom line.

While clenching a black-gloved fist uncontrollably, the red light next to his metal eye blinking furiously.