OT: Recording Industry Ripoff

[Atrocities]

I hear there is a way now to circomvent the Apple IPOD music code.

[Fyron]

There was a way a few months after it was released... DRM is not a protection of content, just an infringement on just fair use laws.

[rdouglass]

Fyron, I think you missed my point. It was not about whether piracy was wrong or right - it is wrong, no questions asked. My point was about how folks are trying to tell companies what they should charge "because they make too much money".

If these same folks took a little peak into the real business world, they would find that things aren't greener on the other side at all and are *never* that 'cut and dried'.

[rdouglass]

And Narf, the publishers do absolutely take the risk. They are the ones that develop the cover art, send promotional stuff to radio stations and the like, pay for studio time, etc. Yes, band members may quit their jobs but that is not necessary to do any studio work - only when the band goes on the road and the producers don't get much from that.

Oh, but what about the folks that do their own? That is the point. There are independant labels out there but are they charging less for their music. I say "ABSOLUTELY NOT!" They are charging the same as any other record labels. People will pay for it if they think it has value. If not, why in the world would someone wait 3 years to pay $400,000 for a Ferrari when they can buy a Neon this weekend for less than $10,000.

The point is is that folks need to look at the real world and what things *really* cost to produce to do before they make judgements. Stop spending so much time arguing the merits and do some *real* research - not just browse the National Enquirer or other tabloid and make judgements based on that. If not, I'm afraid some folks have a bitter outlook ahead of themselves and I do feel sorry for them.

[Fyron]

All of my opinions on RIAA and music are based directly on "real world research," as are most peoples, even if indirectly. Please do not attempt to dismiss valid arguments with ad hominem attacks. Thanks.

The outlook is indeed bleak... RIAA complained about piracy driving profits down in 2000/2001, when the truth was that raw sales were down because they produced thousands fewer albums in those years by choice. Net profits were in fact up over previous years due to the reductions in production costs...

They produce thousands of talentless "artists" that give them more of the same tripe every year. Maybe if they started employing some quality standards and stopped trying to milk money off of every copycat of even mildly successful music trends each year, they wouldn't lose so much money on utter failures of "bands." But if they want to keep digging their collective graves, that's their problem.

The only difference between boycotting a media/software company over price gouging and other companies is that less scrupulous people can still acquire the "product" (how art can be denegrated to a "product" is beyond me, but I digress) while not purchasing it.

Your example of a Ferrari vs. Neon is irrelevant. There is no "budget" or "luxury" music... An interesting "real world fact" is that it is a lot cheaper to manufacture a CD than a cassette tape, yet CDs still cost more. Digital music downloads are even cheaper (bandwidth for a single quality-degraded album is trivial; SEnet could spend 0.19 cents per song at a generous size of 10 MB per song), yet a digital album costs the same as a physical CD, and they want to charge even more...

I (and many others) don't care so much how much money they make. I care that they are producing a very tiny amount of music amidst a deluge of filth and charging an insane rate for it, even for low cost digital downloads. I care that they are constantly attributing a decline in the indrustry to "piracy" (which it is most certainly not) when profits are at an all time high. Being blatantly lied to is not what I consider conducive to getting my money. I care that they are constantly trying to destroy my fair use rights to use legally purchased music however I want (non-commercially) and trying to prevent me from encoding music however I like so that I am not stuck with unusable formats in 5 or 10 years time (thank you DRM!). et cetra...

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Bands have also complained that the only money they make is going on the road - Nothing from the publisher.

[Fyron]

It's clearly all the band's fault.