OT: The recording industry strikes again.

[Ares]

oh pleeze, most new comics are hard enough to sell in the dollar box 2 weeks after they come out, who is pirating floppies? i suppose some of these street vendors I see in NYC might have pirated copies of TPBs, but come on, it is a heck of a lot cheaper to copy and manufacture CDs than print 150 page color TPBs.

 

Clarification

Its not physical copies Im talking about

Im talking about copies that are scanned and uploaded online

[marvelcollector]

You are missing the point. She is not getting hit for having the music illegially. She is getting hit for distributing it to hundreds if not thousands if not tens of thousands of people. This is where the numbers come from.

 

She was offered a settlement, like thousands of other people who were sued for $3,500-$5000. In her infinite wisdom she turned it down. Even AFTER the verdict, the record company says they will still settle for $3500-$5000.

 

Also, another detail of this case thet gets lost is the fact that while she was charged for distribution of 24 songs, she actually had over 1700 she was distributing on Kazaa. They cut it down for "simplicity".

 

While I agree with just about everything that's been said in this thread about the recording industry, this story does illuminate the media's spinning of a story to...someone's..POV...

 

What bugged me was the constant reference to this woman as a mother.

 

What relevance is that?

[the blob]

What bugged me was the constant reference to this woman as a mother.

 

What relevance is that?

-----------------------

 

actually, there's generally a pretty big range in which damages can be awarded in copyright and pretty much everything winds up getting factored into it (to the extent it is a legal factor to look at). while it's mostly about ability to pay, a court and jury should factor in whether the award will put her and her kid out on the street and the impact on the innocent child.

 

i had a defendant in my lone copyright case that went to trial...well, let's just say that the when the court found out the defendant had transferred $500K into a cayman islands account a month after we filed suit and now the defendant was crying poverty...the judge hammered them big time, beyond our wildest expectations in a case where the actual damages (in terms of lost royalties or even sales) were less than $10K, we got almost $500K in statutory damages (which can be awarded in situations where the infringement is found to be sufficiently intentional) and like $300K in legal fees tacked on.

[marvelcollector]

What bugged me was the constant reference to this woman as a mother.

 

What relevance is that?

-----------------------

 

actually, there's generally a pretty big range in which damages can be awarded in copyright and pretty much everything winds up getting factored into it (to the extent it is a legal factor to look at). while it's mostly about ability to pay, a court and jury should factor in whether the award will put her and her kid out on the street and the impact on the innocent child.

 

i had a defendant in my lone copyright case that went to trial...well, let's just say that the when the court found out the defendant had transferred $500K into a cayman islands account a month after we filed suit and now the defendant was crying poverty...the judge hammered them big time, beyond our wildest expectations in a case where the actual damages (in terms of lost royalties or even sales) were less than $10K, we got almost $500K in statutory damages (which can be awarded in situations where the infringement is found to be sufficiently intentional) and like $300K in legal fees tacked on.

 

But this is a matter of the media reporting to the general public to, I suppose, make her look more sympathetic. As a news story it has no relevance.

 

It's the media putting their spin and bias into the story. Or they're being manipulated by the defense attorney.

 

[FlyingDonut]

Where's the 'high-five' emote? Metallica died with Cliff (he wrote a lot of Justice's material, ya know).

 

This thread reminded me of this old gem:

(NSFW launguage)

 

Grabasses...BAD!

 

, I loved those Metallica spoofs by Camp Chaos. Death Magnetic was actually a decent album but I bet ex-pat, Dave Mustaine, will still blow them away when Megadeth's Endgame comes out in September. Dave has been kicking their asses creatively since 1990 when the badass record that is Rust In Peace was released.

 

Back to the topic at hand. First off: people still use Kazaa? I stopped using it years ago. Bit torrent is the way to go! And, yeah, the record industry have been trying to delay the inevitable for years now. They still don't realise that it's not working.

 

Let's try a little test. Here's this week's Billboard Top 10 albums. How many of these acts have you folks heard of?

 

1 Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)

2 Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King

3 Eminem - Relapse

4 Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

5 Aventura- Last

6 Lady Gaga - The Fame

7 Hannah Montana - Movie Soundtrack

8 Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

9 Mos Def - Ecstatic

10 Pleasure P - Introduction Of Marcus Cooper

 

All of them. I try not to have my musical tastes frozen from when I was 15, like some people on this board apparently have.

[codfish]

honestly, i don't know why marvel is pushing digital except i guess they think they can open up some new markets, but these things are going to be pirated like crazy. pirating a copy of marvel masterworks or whatever is simply not worth the time and effort. didn't they learn anything from the demise of newspapers who gave their content away for free?

 

It cuts production cost and dramatically expands their potential market.

 

Most new comics are scanned and released with days of release as, well the groups of scanners have also scanned huge numbers of book going back to the early golden age. Scans of the physical books themselves are usually top notch, fiche reproductions far less so.

 

Marvel did try the same as the record industry but the cat is out of the bag now and trying to put it back in is going to be very hard and taking the record industry approach is counterproductive.

 

What the record industry has done over the years has been futile and they have never proven that pirating has without a doubt been responsible for their loses. Indeed the first big move they made to try and curb the trading of files by shutting down Napster caused huge losses on their part. They never bothered to ask why that is.

 

I know a good many people, including myself, who are more than happy to pay for downloads and by CDs and we have used the pirate market to download and sample music we are interested in. I am confident when I say that what is failing with the music industry is their 20th century approach to marketing. If they cut off the pirate market today their losses would be staggering. What they need to do more of is what the record companies did at iTunes namely provide copy protection free files for reasonable and varying prices.

 

I was ecstatic when iTunes moved to this and I even upgraded all previously purchased files to iTunes plus. It is great to know that I have an incredible catalog of music at my finger tips and which I can freely share between my various computers and devices. I have actually purchased even more because of this and really have little interest in downloading pirated copies because I have to wade through them to find the ones ripped at the highest quality settings (Which is NOT higher bit rates btw)

[dekeuk]

Let's try a little test. Here's this week's Billboard Top 10 albums. How many of these acts have you folks heard of?

 

1 Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)

2 Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King

3 Eminem - Relapse

4 Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

5 Aventura- Last

6 Lady Gaga - The Fame

7 Hannah Montana - Movie Soundtrack

8 Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

9 Mos Def - Ecstatic

10 Pleasure P - Introduction Of Marcus Cooper

 

All of them. I try not to have my musical tastes frozen from when I was 15, like some people on this board apparently have.

 

 

Where's THE ROLLING STONES on this chart

 

[FlyingDonut]

Some new stuff for your heads.

 

Cage the Elephant:

 

[Flaming_Telepath]

Where's the 'high-five' emote? Metallica died with Cliff (he wrote a lot of Justice's material, ya know).

 

This thread reminded me of this old gem:

(NSFW launguage)

 

Grabasses...BAD!

 

, I loved those Metallica spoofs by Camp Chaos. Death Magnetic was actually a decent album but I bet ex-pat, Dave Mustaine, will still blow them away when Megadeth's Endgame comes out in September. Dave has been kicking their asses creatively since 1990 when the badass record that is Rust In Peace was released.

 

Back to the topic at hand. First off: people still use Kazaa? I stopped using it years ago. Bit torrent is the way to go! And, yeah, the record industry have been trying to delay the inevitable for years now. They still don't realise that it's not working.

 

Let's try a little test. Here's this week's Billboard Top 10 albums. How many of these acts have you folks heard of?

 

1 Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)

2 Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King

3 Eminem - Relapse

4 Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

5 Aventura- Last

6 Lady Gaga - The Fame

7 Hannah Montana - Movie Soundtrack

8 Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

9 Mos Def - Ecstatic

10 Pleasure P - Introduction Of Marcus Cooper

 

All of them. I try not to have my musical tastes frozen from when I was 15, like some people on this board apparently have.

 

You big old hipster, you!

[User 01001010]

4 Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

 

 

they are sammy hagar and michael anthony formerly of van ha(gar)len, chad smith of the red hot chili peppers and joe satriani of well, himself.

 

 

geebus i have no idea why i know this and my punk cred just fell a little bit.

 

j

 

[the blob]

ooops, i confused joe satriani with richie s. from van halen.

[FlyingDonut]

 

 

Where's the 'high-five' emote? Metallica died with Cliff (he wrote a lot of Justice's material, ya know).

 

This thread reminded me of this old gem:

(NSFW launguage)

 

Grabasses...BAD!

 

, I loved those Metallica spoofs by Camp Chaos. Death Magnetic was actually a decent album but I bet ex-pat, Dave Mustaine, will still blow them away when Megadeth's Endgame comes out in September. Dave has been kicking their asses creatively since 1990 when the badass record that is Rust In Peace was released.

 

Back to the topic at hand. First off: people still use Kazaa? I stopped using it years ago. Bit torrent is the way to go! And, yeah, the record industry have been trying to delay the inevitable for years now. They still don't realise that it's not working.

 

Let's try a little test. Here's this week's Billboard Top 10 albums. How many of these acts have you folks heard of?

 

1 Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (Energy Never Dies)

2 Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groogrux King

3 Eminem - Relapse

4 Chickenfoot - Chickenfoot

5 Aventura- Last

6 Lady Gaga - The Fame

7 Hannah Montana - Movie Soundtrack

8 Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown

9 Mos Def - Ecstatic

10 Pleasure P - Introduction Of Marcus Cooper

 

All of them. I try not to have my musical tastes frozen from when I was 15, like some people on this board apparently have.

 

You big old hipster, you!

 

 

 

plus I try to listen to what my kids listen to - you never know these days. There's a lot of good stuff out there. The interwebs has, paradoxically, killed big label music, but made it much easier for "indie" bands to get their music to a wide audience.

[He11blazer]

No incentive for innovation? What do University researchers do? They are not well paid.

--------------

 

do you know many university researchers who are doing research into cutting edge drugs and what not? in the u.s. they do quite nicely. honestly, i don't know about europe.

 

if the namibians want to raise their standard of living perhaps they should focus on doing so rather than clan warare, corruption or whatever else is keeping them down. south korea, a dirt poor country 60 years ago with virtually no natural resourses managed to bring itself up to a world class economy, sure, in part due to good cheap labor, which is not so cheap anymore, but nowadays they have a lot of innovation and what not.

 

i happen to live in a country that i don't want to see averaged out with the third world. their standard of living can rise without our standard of living being lowered. it is not a zero sum game. i'm all in favor of susidizng AIDS drugs and what not, but they don't need to get our software and movies for free.

 

I know I'm late in replying, but I rather thought I'd let it drop. For the record though, I'd just like to say that I never suggested that abolishing copyright would benefit third world economies! That's just a bizarre tangent to the conversation.

 

We definitely disagree about world politics, but hey 'no politics' right?

 

If the conversation continues, let's please confine it to copyright law and whether it's a good thing or not

[Comicopolis]

All this because a bunch of people don't recognise most of what's in the top ten

 

Must be coin collectors

[the blob]

you mentioned abolishing patent law too, that's why I went into that

[Silverdream]

Some new stuff for your heads.

 

Cage the Elephant:

 

 

 

Maybe new to many, but quite old already to others. First heard this song over 5 months ago. It's so old to me that ive removed it from my playlist. Go figure.

 

Just sayin

[Silverdream]

No incentive for innovation? What do University researchers do? They are not well paid.

--------------

 

do you know many university researchers who are doing research into cutting edge drugs and what not? in the u.s. they do quite nicely. honestly, i don't know about europe.

 

if the namibians want to raise their standard of living perhaps they should focus on doing so rather than clan warare, corruption or whatever else is keeping them down. south korea, a dirt poor country 60 years ago with virtually no natural resourses managed to bring itself up to a world class economy, sure, in part due to good cheap labor, which is not so cheap anymore, but nowadays they have a lot of innovation and what not.

 

i happen to live in a country that i don't want to see averaged out with the third world. their standard of living can rise without our standard of living being lowered. it is not a zero sum game. i'm all in favor of susidizng AIDS drugs and what not, but they don't need to get our software and movies for free.

 

 

[He11blazer]

No incentive for innovation? What do University researchers do? They are not well paid.

--------------

 

do you know many university researchers who are doing research into cutting edge drugs and what not? in the u.s. they do quite nicely. honestly, i don't know about europe.

 

if the namibians want to raise their standard of living perhaps they should focus on doing so rather than clan warare, corruption or whatever else is keeping them down. south korea, a dirt poor country 60 years ago with virtually no natural resourses managed to bring itself up to a world class economy, sure, in part due to good cheap labor, which is not so cheap anymore, but nowadays they have a lot of innovation and what not.

 

i happen to live in a country that i don't want to see averaged out with the third world. their standard of living can rise without our standard of living being lowered. it is not a zero sum game. i'm all in favor of susidizng AIDS drugs and what not, but they don't need to get our software and movies for free.

 

 

 

Hardly

[He11blazer]

you mentioned abolishing patent law too, that's why I went into that

 

As for that conversation we were having a while back...

 

...I just saw this article about a completely ridiculous (and successful) patent application by Microsoft. The first comment to the article makes some excellent points that I wholeheartedly agree with, so I'm quoting it here:

 

[patent law] throttles creativity by making invention and software development a minefield.

 

Oops, stepped on this patent squatter's 'rights'! Gotta pay up, face a multi-year lawsuit against attorneys backed by a company whose ONLY business is suing developers and inventors who 'infringe' on various vaguely worded patents they hold, or scuttle the whole project!

 

It's how Chevron kept large format NiMH batteries off the market and killed the electric car in the 1990's - by taking control of Cobasys. Why most of the thousands of electric cars built back then (with 100+ mile EV range) were CRUSHED when they were collected at the end of their leases.

 

Microsoft also 'patented' page-up and page-down in 2008, as you may recall.

 

Yay, big oil! Yay monopoly! Yay patent squatters!

 

Boo, to anyone who tries to invent or create anything new!

 

Wave the flag, proud Americans, and then bend over. The economy stagnates and new products are made and released overseas that you can't have. Including EVs made with cheaper NiMH batteries using far more abundant nickel. A little heavier and slightly less power density, but absolutely indestructible, and simpler, less costly charge circuitry.

 

In 2001, an Australian man patented THE WHEEL, for cryin' out loud.

 

It's been a long time since the likes of Einstein worked in a patent office.

 

Now they're all apparently staffed by Dumb & Dumber.

 

[nocutename]

It is a shame when bigger companies squash certain technologies by either purchasing the competition or just withholding it from the public but it happens all the time. If you think that MS patent is crazy, I believe it is IBM that holds the most patents. They have everything under the sun patented and will defend it like crazy.