defectivebydesign.org — Listen to this recording of yesterday's public conference call with anti-RIAA lawyer Ray Beckerman. Ray describes the shocking story behind these lawsuits, and how the RIAA is busy rewriting copyright law in the courtroom and through DRM. Can these lawsuits and the RIAA be stopped? Ray and DefectiveByDesign.org tell us "yes, but with help".
Jul 20, 2006 View in Crawl 4
geekeeJul 20, 2006
If you stopped stealing music online, they would stop suing people. They would also stop spending lots of money lobbying congress for more restrictive copyright legislation if people could be trusted not to steal their music. You have yourselves to blame. Now go ahead and mod me down and continue with your pathetic excuses.
meltingrobotJul 20, 2006
"Independent bands are only RIAA tools that have not yet been signed." That's about the dumbest thing I've seen all week. And I surf a lot of digg. Believe it or not, there are bands that are independent because they choose to be. Not all bands are after the mega-ultra rock star dream thing. At the same time, not all bands are stupid enough to think that they would get a good deal signing with a major label. Take Mindless Self Indulgence for example, they are on Metropolis Records and have been for some time. I'm sure they have been offered a major label deal several times. They sell plenty of albums and sell out every concert I've seen of theirs. But if you look at <a class="user" href="http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp">http://www.riaa.com/about/members/default.asp</a> , you will notice Metropolis appears nowhere in there. Why? Because it's an independent label.
nofxjunkeeJul 20, 2006
unfortunately i think WMP and iTunes are going to be a big barrier to vorbis becoming widely accepted. add mp3 players, mp3 cd players, divx players into the mix and it doesn't look so good for the ogg-dwelling formats in the short run.
haggieJul 20, 2006
mispost
Closed AccountJul 20, 2006
Ufortunately your "State of the Union" speech is exactly contrary to the American presidential stance on DRM (not that Bush could understand it). Official American Governmental policy is definately in favour of DRM and Software Copyrights simply because Bill Gates told them that they're a Good Thing (tm).
jetx29Jul 20, 2006
Your question may undermine the RIAA's claim that they've lost money, but doesn't address the problem of the downloader having no business owning it. If you were to steal anything, you could always claim you wouldn't have bought it, doesn't mean you deserve to have it. Just pointing out a relative flaw in that line of thinking, doesn't mean I love the RIAA or anything.
cremateJul 20, 2006
Why are software copyrights bad? And what does Bill gates have to do with DRM?
babblingJul 21, 2006
teethman: The other formats/codecs are covered by software patents. This means that you could be sued for running programs that use other formats, whereas Ogg Vorbis/Theora are safe.It also means that anyone is allowed to write software that can use Ogg Vorbis/Theora, which, in the long run, results in more (and better) software for everyone.