What is Digg?109 Comments
- Hipple, on 10/12/2007, -2/+83Hopefully the World Wide Web will get its revenge soon and shut down the RIAA...
- jhaitas, on 10/12/2007, -14/+95***** THE RIAA
- jus1haz2, on 10/12/2007, -10/+78So sick of the ***** RIAA and MPAA trying to control everything!
- RogerStrong, on 10/12/2007, -9/+51The RIAA has authority only in the US. Only perhaps the American part would have been affected. (Yes, other countries had interconnected data networks similar to DarpaNet, long before 1994.)
Email wouldn't be affected. Usenet woudn't be affected. Adoption of the world-wide-web would have been set back, but non-American root servers and browsers would have appeared. - jonathan4465, on 10/12/2007, -3/+39I'm so sick of hearing about the RIAA! It's painfully obvious that they will never comprehend the power of the net and it's power users, and consequently they will NEVER stop file sharing on any level.
I remember trading music on the origional Napster and saying to myself "The RIAA should figure out a way to distribute their music via the web and still make a buck, otherwise they will shut THEMSELVES down." And guess what, they STILL have yet to wake up to this fact. It's actually funny to me that they think they can make technology move backwards, like they will actually get me to buy a CD for 19.95 next week! Cd's were $20 in the 80's when they came out, and in 1999 they were STILL around $20, which is why people started to share music via Napster. When technology becomes cheaper to produce, you should lower the cost to the consumer. Their greedy asses dismissed that model and now they are looking for answers.
To hell with them I say. - Frankie4Fingers, on 10/12/2007, -1/+26No *****. Distributing music over the internet, like iTunes should be 80% cheaper then it is. Here's why:
You don't have to pay advertising.... Apple does it for you in order to sell the music.
You don't have to pay for packaging.... It is downloaded.
You don't have to pay for distribution, a 4mb file is really cheap to distribute. Maybe $.05, but probably a lot less per file.
You can sell internationally without sales taxes at the moment....
You can sell more from non-mainstream because users can be recommended people they have never heard of based on who they have bought.
You can allow users to sample songs which will help them purchase.
You can gain new customers who typically were afraid to buy a whole CD of an artist, now they can just buy what they like and maybe later buy the rest if they eventually like the rest of the artist.
There are more, but I am at work and don't want to spend too much time on this... but the point is, the music on the download services should be much cheaper then a CD and as we have seen, if you buy a full album of songs, it will be more expensive in some cases from iTunes and sometimes it will be the same as a normal CD and you aren't even getting the full quality song. What a ripoff.
Oh well, the music industry will never learn................. - rokinroj, on 10/12/2007, -2/+19In 1994 the internet was used primarily for pirating?...Pish!
In 1994 it was ALL about alt.binaries.?? - iamnos, on 10/12/2007, -13/+28Yeah, I'd like to see the sources for this. In 94, I was in University. If there were only 100 internet sites, you should be proud to know me since I was responsible for the creation of about 5% of the whole WWW at that point (sarcasm). As you stated, the Internet and the WWW existed well outside the borders of the US by that point in time, there's no way the RIAA could have shut it down.
- Corrosionx, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15I have boycotted all RIAA-affiliated artists since the RIAA have started suing people.
The message to the artists is: "Boycott the RIAA or I'll boycott you"
You want things to change, this is the only way. Vote with your dollars! - Blakechi, on 10/12/2007, -2/+16RIAA = A music based version of the Gestapo.
Or the KGB.
(Take your pick).
The genie is out of the bottle. Step aside or get run over. - maglob, on 10/12/2007, -14/+27But without America the Internet would never have taken off, mostly because America is where money can be made. A ban in America would definitely set industry to a stand-still, disturbing really
- mikesly, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Just realized if the RIAA and MPAA merge they will become SkyNET!
- iamnos, on 10/12/2007, -4/+16@abadinalbany
You said...
"I believe all TLDs were controlled in the US"
I pointed out (with a source) that not all TLDs were controlled in the US.
You said...
"but the TLD server that pointed you"
Which doesn't make sense at all, so I pointed out that what you are referring to is the root name servers.
I fail to see the hole I've dug(g) myself into. Regardless, the likelihood that the RIAA could have even come close to shutting down the WWW, the root name servers, or any other portion of the Internet is unlikely at best. Even 1994 the US wasn't the center for all traffic on the Internet as you apparently like to think. Canada was very well connected at that point, as well as a lot of western Europe.
This forum posting really provides no sources for this claim. The RIAA would have had to prove that at least the majority of usage of the internet at that time was for pirating copyrighted material, which would have been difficult to prove, and even if so, would have only shut things down within the US. The absolute worst that would have happened is that routes in and out of the US would have gone dark, which would have been compensated for at some point, and a new batch of root servers setup. - emrikol, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13Simple: It's copyright infringement.
- dreicher, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10"By mid-1994 the Internet connected an estimated two million computers in more than 100 countries, serving some 23 million users."
23 million people all looking at 100 pages! Wow, seems almost UNBELIEVABLE! - KSUdesigner, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10The law is on their side because they helped to create those laws.
- SaxxonPike, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I'm not seeing too many artists giving two ***** about it. The RIAA, on the other hand...
- Borfo, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10Everyone getting all uppity over this should probably take note of the fact that the author cites no sources whatsoever for the allegation that the RIAA tried to "shut down the world wide web". There are plenty of real reasons to rile against the RIAA, no need to make stuff up.
Also, I too am pleased to know that I was responsible for a significant percentage of the 100 pages that allegedly existed on the web at that point in time.
Also, if I'm remembering correctly mp3s weren't really around in 1993... - bIuebonics, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10stealing involves loss of a product NOT loss of a sale, copyright infringement does not involve the loss of a product
- themoose, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10@macgyver
They digg it because it has relevance to the article and so they don't have to post it too. - Hipple, on 10/12/2007, -2/+9@Retral
Fortunately, the numbers are on our side. The law only holds authority to the extent that the citizens of the government enacting that law respect it and wish for it to be upheld. Large groups of like-minded people always have been and always will be (hopefully) more powerful than the law. - masona3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+8The RIAA is just a turd that won't flush. Fortunately, the Internets has a big toilet brush on hand.
- Scrappy1850, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9they make all this trouble just because i want to download that jam by Frankie Goes To Hollywood? it just doesnt make sense...
- goeatsmsht, on 10/12/2007, -3/+9+1 for thr Frankie Goes to Hollywood refrence
- AustinMeoang, on 10/12/2007, -6/+11@themoose
Plus, we love Texas! - Sparkster185, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Welcome to capitalism, buddy.
- bIuebonics, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7personally? i wouldn't write software that wasn't freeware... but that's just me... i'm aware copyright infringement takes place and i'm aware that there are people who would still be willing to donate money for the work that i have done. that aside, copyright infringement is still not stealing... :P
- RogerStrong, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5re: "No route, no Web, no Internet."
Email: At worst we would have kept using our old email addresses. Yeah, you had to think for a moment about how to address an email to (here in Canada) someone on DataPac or the IBM or GE networks from your Compuserve account, but we were already used to that.
Usenet: Unaffected.
Web: Adoption would have been slowed down a few months, as a totally outside-the-US solution was developed.
Compuserve, AOL and Genie would in turn have stayed popular a little longer. - HeatVision, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5This article is inaccurate, at least according to his sources.
---
Dec 21 1993:
"the National Music Publishers Association has filed a class-action lawsuit against CompuServe for copyright infringement on behalf of 140 Music Publishers. The main focus of the suit is Compuserve's MIDI Forum. The suit defines every download as a single infringment, and by seeking $100K in damages for each infringment, the damages would amount to over a BILLION dollars should the suit be successful. "
----
A) The source doesn't load and if even if it did, how does that translate to the year being 1994 and the RIAA wanting to shut down the World Wide Web? - sonycam, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I'm sure if the internet was shut down in the US, the rest of the world would create their own TLD's somehow.
To the Americans though, just imagine the negative effects on your economy if the internet didn't take off. I'm just the vast majority of the top 500 companies use the internet, many of them to offer services or products internationally. If the US was the only country in the world without the internet, I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be where you are today in many fields, markets and sectors.
The RIAA could've really screwed up your economy and life as a result ;] - weprin, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5Too often, societal and technological progress is slowed down or halted for no better reason than some schmuck or series of schmucks want to get paid.
- ATHEISTinHELL, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7the MPAA also sucks if it was for them we would not have VCR's . They said it will kill the movie industry :)
- MacGyver2210, on 10/12/2007, -2/+6FTA: "Back then, there were reportedly only 100 web pages in the world. No one talked about web "sites" back then, they were just pages. Yahoo was 1 web page with less than 100 links. Word of mouth made Yahoo popular."
Clearly, this guy is either making up most of this or is a retard. If there were 100 pages on the internet at that point, which is blatantly false, Yahoo would not have listed every one of them. I know I certainly trust everything I hear from a forum admin on cheapbooks.com, oh yes. Don't question the cheap books. - emrikol, on 10/12/2007, -3/+7They've been around since at least '91
Before that we traded wavs and mp2s - iamnos, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@borfo
I know exactly what you're saying. While someone else pointed out that mp3's were around, there wasn't much trading of them. Considering most of us were still on dial up, and even our University connections were painfully slow, trading 3-4MB files wasn't something that was going on a lot. Even if you did, that massive 540MB HD I had at the time wasn't going to hold very many songs, and its not like we had the option of burning to CD at that point. - Borfo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5I remember having a couple of songs that I encoded myself, but yeah, I think I had a 540mb hd at that point too, maybe even less. I definitely remember thinking that the storage for even just a few mp3s wasn't worthwhile.
I'm not sure, but I think I might still have had a 486 at that point... Dialup limitations aside, CPU cycles were pretty precious back then too, you used to have to shut down non-essential applications just to get the machines to perform decently at the main application you were using at any given time. It was a lot easier just to play your music on a standalone cd player back then. - Matri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Or taking a photograph of the Mona Lisa.
- iamnos, on 10/12/2007, -7/+10@abadinalbany
Nope, for one example (there are lots maybe even hundreds more):
From wikipedia regarding the .ca (Canada) TLD:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.ca
The domain name was originally allocated by Jon Postel, operator of Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1988. - Borfo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3@cheapbooks
...You submitted an article titled "how the riaa almost shut down the world wide web", which you admit was constructed from no source other than your recollection of statements by the RIAA made 12 or more years ago
That's more than a little inflammatory. Even if the RIAA ever made a serious effort to "shut down the entire world wide web" - and I am by no means acknowledging that they did - they certainly did not "almost" succeed, despite whatever strong recollections you may have.
Like I said above, there are plenty of very good reasons to be upset with the manner in which the RIAA conducts itself. Why not focus on the appalling stuff they actually do? While a lot of people will believe anything they read that happens to agree with their philosophical standpoint, your story can be debunked by anyone who thinks critically about what they read.
By perpetuating this sort of BS, you are encouraging a bunch of people to repeat the story, saying "I read somewhere that the RIAA tried to shut down the internet in 1994...". That undermines the anti-RIAA position generally, because it's obviously *****. If those same people were walking around saying "I read somewhere that the RIAA stands in the way of progress by blocking new technology in the name of protecting its members from loss," or "I read somewhere that the RIAA abuses the legal system by launching groundless copyright infringement lawsuits based on little or no real evidence", then the people they were talking to might actually listen.
Not to inflate your sense of self importance, but this sort of story has a life of its own. Some other guy will probably remember reading this, and will repeat your baseless claim somewhere else, until it becomes yet another apocryphal story that a bunch of people vaguely remember hearing somewhere, and they in turn are likely to perpetuate it, because they sort of believe it by virtue of having heard about it a number of times.
When there are so many damning things you could say about the RIAA that are true, why throw something out there that's not...
Anyhow, not trying to be a jerk, but it's important that people think critically about the stuff they read. Just because some guy claims to have a strong recollection of something doesn't make it true. - ColdDimSum, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3Na, only 110 people had web browsers to look at those 100 sites :)
- cheapbooks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I wrote the article and this will clear up some of the comments people have made.
I first heard of the web in 1992 and made my first web site in 1994.
I did not cite any references in the article other than my strong recollection that the RIAA made those statements in the news at the time. surprisingly, they make the same arguments now, and they were disliked back then (and earlier) just as they are now.
believe it or not, the web was really small at the time.
I made some updates to the story to correct some of the misinterpretations that people have made about what I wrote. Yes, I do remember when Yahoo was only 1 page and had less than 100 links. A friend of mine was in the first article in Time magazine that mentioned the internet. everyone believed at the time that the web should be non-commercial, and putting an advertisement anywhere was considered inappropriate, even after the first ad came out in oct 1994.
and yes, mp3 did come out a few years before 1993. - bIuebonics, on 10/12/2007, -2/+4what's the point of copyrights? here:
http://www.lib.byu.edu/departs/copyright/tutorial/module1/page3.htm
http://www.udel.edu/topics/techtalk/1998/March/purpose.html
and to quote directly from section 8 of the constitution (in case the above wasn't enough) "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;" is the reference from which copyright laws are derived. it has nothing to do with making sure someone gets their money. this is the short term, non-purpose of copyrights. it's to promote the progress of the arts by giving people incentive to create knowing that for a SHORT TIME they'll have an exclusive monopoly over their creation which then becomes public domain. this creates an environment that progresses science and the arts for the good of the general public, it is NOT so people can be greedy and try to forever force restrictions upon copyrighted material. is copyright infringement wrong? short answer: yes. is what the riaa, the claims, and the laws they're trying to push right? definite answer: no. - cheapbooks, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2I wrote the article in question. I never stated that in 1994 there were only 100 web sites in the world. in fact, there were far more in 1994. I meant earlier.
in fact in 1991, there was only 1 web page.
second, the internet is NOT the web! lots of people used the internet back then. we used usenet, email, & IRC to communicate. they all predated the web. browsers were few and far between. - scabbers, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Being out in 91 isn't the same as people swapping them.
I don't think the RIAA were ever concerned about MIDIs or mods. Nobody ever lost a record sale because someone sampled a bit of their song for use in a MOD, or recreated a tune (really badly) as a midi. - empyreal, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Heh, 1994. I seem to recall using mostly FreeNet with Gopher and Archie and Veronica. Could be wrong, HTML was around, but was still to new to be worthwhile. Besides most pages just had animated gifs in no semblance of order ;)
Edit : could be 1993 im commenting on, loosing my memory in my old age ! *snicker* - Matri, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Imagine, if you will, blueprints. For something, anything. Maybe the design for a car.
Person A draws up the blueprints. He thinks up the design and works to put it on paper. Person A is an employee of Person B. Because of this, Person B "owns" the blueprints and sells copies of them. Person C then takes a photograph of these blueprints and gives out copies to other people.
Asked about the blueprints, Person B always goes "Mine! Mine! Mine! You didn't buy a copy, I only rented it to you!"
Person C however, goes "Blueprints by Person A! Blueprints by Person A!"
Draw your own conclusions. - richarddd, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1RIAA and MPAA don't effect me in the UK :)
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Wheter you are a mac linux or windows fanboy, leftist moonbat, or righ wing "elitist" you should read this article.
I can think of other organizations that use the very same tactics as the RIAA but this exposes them for what they really are. - Prysorra, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Saying downloading song copies is stealing is like saying making copies of the Mona Lisa is stealing.
What would you do with the copies? That's the question. -
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