cybernetnews.com — The RIAA is suing the website AllofMP3.com on behalf of EMI, Sony BMG, Universal Music, and Warner Music in the amount of $150,000 for each of the 11 million songs that were downloaded from June to October of 2006. That comes to a lawsuit totaling $1.65 trillion!
Dec 22, 2006 View in Crawl 4
crazychipmunkDec 23, 2006
Hey, ya know that war that the US wants us to pay for? Problem freakin solved.
baxtermadduxDec 23, 2006
i know my firefox skin is Teh Gayness, but it makes me happy. Gianna Michaels makes me happier.
ultroniarDec 23, 2006
$150,000 a song? I can get them off iTunes for 99 cents each.
vuduchildDec 23, 2006
I hope the residents of the USA can one day vote for some politicians that are not completely owned by these organizations, its clearly been going on to long if they believe this is a valid case. Do the RIAA rock up to all the religious party meetings too?
rocket000Dec 24, 2006
now?
iconwolfDec 24, 2006
OK, to add to the debate here's a little something I came across:<a class="user" href="http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html">http://www.arancidamoeba.com/mrr/problemwithmusic.html</a>Now I don't know a "lot" of people in the music industry, but I've known a number of bands over the years (one was a band Disturbed used to open for before Distrubed hit it big, another toured with several fairly well known metal bands in the 80s) so I know the number thrown around in the above article are likely not exaggerated.Notice the royalties. 250,000 albums sold, and the band itself still has a net loss of $14,000.Add to that due to the way the industry has structured their business model, the artists themselves get significantly less on digital music sales than actual CD sales. Here's just one example:<a class="user" href="http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/">http://digitalmusic.weblogsinc.com/2006/06/14/weird-al-yankovic-says-digital-is-a-raw-deal-for-some-artists/</a>Bands make their money by touring. I'll give you an example. A number of years ago the Rolling Stones played three nights at Chicago's Soldier Field. Mick (who I once heard mention is suppose to have a degree in economics) and company negotiated a cut of everything: tickets, concessions, everything. The paper reported their cut for those three nights? $3 million (of course they still have to pay equipment, travel, and crew costs, but I'm willing to bet they still had a huge chunk of that 3 mil after they were done). Why? because just about everyone knows who the Stones are they rely and depend on that popularity to attract 30-40 thousand fans to come watch them play. You can be ten times a better band than the Rolling Stones, but if nobody knows who you are, nobody is going to come watch you play. The only people who benefit (under the current power structure) from album and digital music sales is the labels, if your an artist and you are relying on these channels for the bulk of your income, your might want to consider getting a second job.Additionally, this lawsuit is not necessarily intended to "win" any money. It's intended to be yet another vehicle to drive an successful alternative business model out of business so the industry can cling to it's current power structure to secure its steady line of income. Technology has already made it possible for artist to circumvent the "traditional" recording process (if you've ever seen MTV's Cribs, you'll notice a lot of artist - especially the rappers like Snoop and Ludacris - have their own recording studios *in their homes*) so the labels are trying desperately to cling to the other major avenue of income - the distribution and marketing stream (which is why you can expect them to do everything possible to insure that proposed MySpace music store is a collosal failure).If people really want to help and support the artists, stop supporting the RIAA.
taylorhaywardDec 26, 2006
I own the rights to my music, and it's free to download.<a class="user" href="http://taylorhayward.org">http://taylorhayward.org</a>
stickittothemonDec 28, 2006
On the plus side, its nice to know the RIAA has a sense of Humor.
matthewsmithDec 28, 2006
I'm ecstatic to see what happens next either RIAA comes clean and requests a reasonable figure (which they wont) or Russia tells them to stick it (either way i think this is whats going to happen).
dreamscape86Jan 7, 2007
Your "explanation" #3 still misses the point though. If the RIAA sues AllofMP3 in Russian courts, they will lose because AllofMP3 *isn't breaking any Russian laws*. And if they sue them in U.S. courts, the suit will be thrown out because the company doesn't operate in the U.S. and thus the court has no jurisdiction.