What is Digg?92 Comments
- DiggingDeep, on 10/12/2007, -1/+106What better way to protest than to stay home and download.
- 7levels, on 10/12/2007, -3/+76In part 5, he says that music sales had been climbing steadily by 11%-12% a year in the 90s, up to 1999. This is not true. See for yourself how the music industry's sales have changed over the last 10 years. http://www.riaa.com/news/marketingdata/facts.asp
Piracy hasn't cut music sales by a third or anything even close to that. The decline in the sales of physical music is due in part to the advent of P2P clients that began with Napster, but it is also the natural evolution of one musical medium to another. Sales of cassettes dropped as sales of CDs rose, and the same will happen with CDs a Downloads. The evidence for that is in the chart linked to above, as well. - Flamekebab, on 10/12/2007, -1/+55Apathetic protesting, hehe.
"Stop pirating our stuff"
"m'eh" - SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -0/+52I had class that I couldn't miss.. but don't worry, torrents were running.
- schoate09, on 10/12/2007, -7/+48***** the RIAA.
- Blizzardman, on 10/12/2007, -0/+36Well as a student at ASU I can tell you that they made it at an unreasonable time (10AM) on a Wed. which is one of the busiest days of the week in terms of classes.
- DC720, on 10/12/2007, -3/+35Of all the thousands of kids at ASU, I'd expect there to be more people listening to this guy. I thought this was a bigger issue to them.
- m3rlinb, on 10/12/2007, -0/+30The vast majority of people who download music illegally (I actually do not download illegally) want to support the artists, but that is not the goal of the RIAA. They don't care about the artist in the slightest, their main goal is the maximum profit for major record labels out there. The artist that actually created the music are making cents on the dollar of what the major labels are making.
From Howstuffworks (http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/music-royalties6.htm):
"Recording-artist royalties (and contracts) are extremely complex and a hotbed of debate in the music world. From the outside, the calculation appears fairly simple. Artists are paid royalties usually somewhere between 8% and 25% of the suggested retail price of the recording. Exactly where it falls depends on the clout of the artist (a brand new artist might receive less than a well-known artist). From this percentage, a 25% deduction for packaging is taken out (even though packaging rarely costs 25% of the total price of the CD or cassette). So, here is how it looks so far. Let's say a CD sells for $15. Right away we deduct 25% from that for packaging, which makes the royalty base $11.25. Now let's say our artist has a 10% royalty rate and that his CD sells one million copies. That sounds great! The artist would earn $1,125,000! Except 10% of those were actually freebies, so we really have to calculate that royalty based on 900,000, which makes the royalty $1,012,500, and of course, there are few costs we haven't talked about yet. Let's see what these recoupable expenses do to our artist's $1,012,500 royalty we calculated earlier. Suppose the recording costs were $300,000 (100% recoupable), promotion costs were $200,000 (100% recoupable), tour costs were $200,000 (50% recoupable), and a music video cost $400,000 (50% recoupable). That comes out to:
$300,000 + $200,000 + $100,000 + $200,000 = $800,000
Suddenly our artist isn't making a million plus, he's making $212,500. But don't forget there is also a manager to be paid (usually 20%), as well as a producer and possibly several band members. The artist won't see any royalty money until all of these expenses are paid."
Now the RIAA is focused on returning 'lost' profits from the illegal use of P2P file sharing to distribute music. They show figures of huge loses due to file sharing, but in fact these figures are based on the sale of CDs during the transition phase from Tapes to CDs which inflated the average number of sales as people went out to purchase copies of their current Tape based music on CD. The RIAA believes that number of sales should have continued to present day. But with most medium changes, there is a spike at the beginning of the transition as the large collections of the previous medium (Tapes in this case) are transfered to the new medium (CDs), so that the average number of CD sales is actually far below that beginning surge.
The RIAA's lawsuit scheme seems to be based more on a shotgun approach as apposed to actually finding people illegally copying music. Most notably the suit Gertrude Walton, who in fact turned out to be dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA#Criticism about half the way down). The RIAA is more focused on blindly suing a large amount of people and then offering settlements to people who did nothing wrong but don't have the time or money to fight it in court. They also don't seem to understand modern technology in slightest, for example they argued that a person who legally bought a CD should not be allowed to rip it to their iPod (despite that this is covered by FairUse) and should be forced to purchase a digital copy of that same album in order to put it on their iPod.
I do think that the artist deserves compensation for the purchase of their work. But this is not what the RIAA is attempting to defend. The RIAA is only looking out for the bloated profits of the major record labels (who control roughly 90% of all music sold in the US). And to add insult to injury, the vast majority of their techniques, to squeeze these bloated profit figures from the people, are unethical and borderline illegal themselves. The RIAA should be stopped from continuing its unethical and illegal processes of legal manipulation and baseless threats.
P.S. I apologize for the comment spam of my original post but at the time did not have the time to craft a full response. It was also meant as a joke. - PATSCRU, on 10/12/2007, -18/+44college kids don't give a ***** about anything anymore....most of them who get served by the RIAA just mope, put on a sad face, and send the settlement bill to their parents....so glad to be a part of the most apathetic generation ever.
- antifreze, on 10/12/2007, -3/+28wow... an open discussion.. ASU could have railed them with questions and counter-examples of everything they "supposedly" lose.
way to drop the ball on this one. - aliengoods, on 10/12/2007, -5/+30***** deal with it.
- Lyanto, on 10/12/2007, -3/+27@bonch
That also seems to be the RIAA's motto, considering how they've acted for awhile now. They don't care about artists' rights or how much money the artists lose, they care about THEIR rights and how much money THEY "lose". - pninny2001, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Yeah, the turnout was pretty bad. Part of the reason we got a camera there was because we were hoping for zany protests, but not so much ..
- DannySpace, on 10/12/2007, -2/+24I totally just pirated this video!
- killerkaz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19@Bonch
The RIAA does not represent artists it represents labels. Most artists say the labels steal their IP with BS contracts. Either way you're an idiot. - Toast1185, on 10/12/2007, -0/+18"so glad to be a part of the most apathetic generation ever."
Don't confuse political apathy with a complete lack of caring. Between the volunteer work, the resume building, the internships, the full course load and the various other clubs and groups, when am I supposed to find time to hold up a sign in the middle of the quad so that I can get nothing accomplished but somehow feel better about myself because I'm 'stickin' it to the man'. The fast paced world that we are living in makes demonstration very difficult (look at the lack of uproar from the PATRIOT Act). Furthermore, any radical or silly thing you do is now captured forever in its digital splendor (If John Kerry throwing a medal 30 years ago caused him so much grief, imagine what will happen to you now).
It's not that no one cares, it's just that we care about different things now. - oxdeltaxo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+20@Lyanto
I think the artists could do without the representation of the RIAA. The RIAA is just a bunch of lawyers and suits. If the artists are smart they could manage themselves using nothing but their computer. - Continuum, on 10/12/2007, -1/+16@bonch
actually, there is a fair number of artists that don't like the RIAA either.
http://www.musiccreators.ca/wp/ - Marvelboy, on 10/12/2007, -6/+21Not exactly sure who you're calling apathetic, because my friends and I regularly participate in politics and such. Maybe it's part of being from the northeast, but if this had taken place locally there would have been ALOT more students.
- frozendice, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14You should have seen the people picketing. They were outside where the VP spoke, at one point he asked them if they had anything better to do, they said, "we're waiting for our downloads to finish". LOL~
- heaintheavy, on 10/12/2007, -5/+17Listen kids, it is stealing. OK...stealing. The representative from the RIAA was completely within his right to talk about lost sales and revenue for the companies his organization represents. The "protesters" blew it. They are protesting the wrong issue. This is not about the downloading. This also is not about the music industry putting out a bad product; it is about the RIAA methodology in tracking down piracy.
Sheesh. What a wasted opportunity
I cannot believe no one in the audience brought up the intereview where Warner Music Group head Edgar Bronfman admitted he knew his daughter illegally downloaded music of the Internet. Where is the lawsuit against her?
http://blogs.reuters.com/2006/12/01/the-most-dangerous-download-of-all/
What is interesting is that the RIAA and record companies are completely ignoring the revenue allofmp3.com is able to generate -- with people PAYING to download music. People want to pay to download, if given complete control over their purchase and a reasonable price. Hell, I bet iTunes sales would go much higher were it able to negotiate non-DRM with the record companies. - KamikazeeDriver, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14yeah they dropped that ball alright. If only they didn't have class (you know, to build a future) when this took place, then more might have shown up with questions.
- sadsac, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11I was there. The turnout was around 20-30, give or take. The protesters came in about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way through. There were 3 or 4 of them. They had some signs. One sign read "RIAAReaper" (made in the cutout of the grim reaper), another one said "the RIAA sued my pants off" carried by some chick in really short shorts. Another sign read "download like it is 1999". The chick in the shorts had a handful of change (mostly pennies) that she said was a collection she took for metallica's retirement fund. The chick left the coins of the table.
As far as Hughes, the comment of his that I thought was mildly funny was that he was the surprised that his catch phrase "education through litigation" hadn't caught on with others at the association. The dude did make some plausible arguments, mostly asking for pity - but it is hard to have pity for an association that on one hand asks for compassion, and then on the other, sues your ass. He admitted that the very market (college students) that they are trying to win back as customers, is the same market that ends up as defendants in the lawsuits. - AngelBunny, on 10/12/2007, -2/+11if you had to pause your torrent to speed up your download then your upload rate is to high and you are not productivly using bit torrent
- SultanTravi, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Crap.. can't edit my above post.
I forgot to add that I saw protesters in front of the computing commons on the way to class.. so don't call us apathetic. They had signs and were chanting stuff. - reiner15, on 10/12/2007, -1/+9If I attended ASU, I would have skipped a class to go to this. I've skipped class for much less.
- toros, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I can't believe I paused my torrents to let the videos load faster. Way to drop the ball ASU
- h3ndrix, on 10/12/2007, -4/+12If I had known he was here, he wouldn't have been able to leave.
*walks into shadows* - qwertyuio, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoPufLyAci4&eurl=http%3A%2F%2Fduggmirror%2Ecom%2Ftech%5Fnews%2FVideo%5FWhat%5Fthe%5FRIAA%5Fhas%5Fto%5Fsay%5Fto%5FYOU%5FRIAA%5Fspeaks%5Fat%5FASU%5Fcampus%2F
- metalhead3767, on 10/12/2007, -2/+10I can't believe a school for programming and digital video can't plug their microphones into the camera. Its recording the sound coming out of the speakers. It sounds like *****.
- mjhamilton, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7Why is this guy still alive after walking onto college campus?
- Topher06, on 10/12/2007, -2/+8The students probably thought this was an RIAA shakedown, like winning a new sailboat and having to pick it up at the police station.
- growlzor, on 10/12/2007, -1/+7Thats a real bummer there wasn't a bigger turn out, that guy looks like such a scumbag
- Godel, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6@crawfish
They sent us an e-mail about it a week before time. - KamikazeeDriver, on 10/12/2007, -4/+9I agree with aliengoods. I view digg through an RSS tab on firefox, so I never thought about what it's like to be a category nazi
- RobotDan, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5I wish i was there.
That would be cool, RIAA whores, in a room filled with diggers.
"Excellent" -Mr.Burns impression - Depthfunction, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5That dude is such a corporate sell-out. I can't imagine what his 16-year-old former self would say to him today if he met himself. ("You used to be about the music! Now you're suing kids and making excuses for the Man!")
- joeydoo, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5@blizzardman
They probably didn't want hecklers. If it was at 7pm on a Friday it would have made for a much more interesting "event". Your typical heckler wouldn't be awake at 10am or if they did turn up at that time be in a more subdued state... right before morning coffee.
That RIAA is shrewd.. ¬_¬ - macmichael01, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I didn't care to listen to the whole thing but this guys sounds like the typical *****. It's called basic economics 101 Baldie. Consumers control the price at which they feel is acceptable and if you charge a price this is not acceptable, well, then consumers will simply find an alternative or simply not buy the product. Now if you have a monopoly then yes you can set the price to what ever you damn well feel, but last time I checked that was illegal in the US. So be receptive to what the consumers want and are willing to pay. In the end only the strong succeed in making profits and the weak drop out of the market. All this talk about money makes me sick, shouldn't we be focused on what is most important, The ARTIST. That is where my contributions go not to some ***** sitting in an office making money off of someone else's talents.
- ChiKoo, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I go to ASU, and the timing of this event was extremely terrible. It was probably scheduled at this time because David Hughes did not want to have to deal with more students. I would've gone if it weren't for class.
Curse you midterms! - echo2501, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5***** the...
*sigh*
I don't even know what that means anymore. - pixelat3d, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Not gonna lie ... that made most of the anti-RIAA people seem like crazies, grats' overzealous students, you're making us all look bad.
A) The RIAA dude (David) was composed very well, but he lied -a lot- I don't know if it was intentional or not, but i would think that "senior vice-president of technology for the RIAA" would know more about the actual collection method of mp3 data...
B) No one really asked him any questions about the company itself. Again, the RIAA got of scott free as all the students immediacy went into defensive mode about defending their piracy habits, and or the motivations of the company to sue people. The same question was asked 40 times in slightly different ways.
C) Hats off for the analogies, David. It seems they properly taught you the secret to flipping the truth = ) - echo2501, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Higher quality (audible) versions available for purchase on CD for $19.99.
- FiP0, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I couldn't hear anything from those videos... And there was a talking flash ad at the bottom of the page...
- strabes, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3He makes the argument that because of music piracy, the record companies don't have enough money to take risks on artists and therefore put out stuff like Britney Spears, Justin Timberlake, and Jessica Simpson. That's nonsense - They would put that stuff out even if piracy didn't exist because it involves a smaller risk and artist for artist they make as much or more money with pop music as they would with a decent band. Probably the latter because those pop celebs are around forever getting themselves into trouble and appearing on the front pages of celeb gossip magazines instead of making good music.
- J6stik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Does anyone know what happened to the fifth video in the discussion? I want to know why it got taken down.
- sherlockian, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Reminds me of the part in Fear and Loathing...
DR. BLUMQUIST
Now, there are four states of being
in the cannabis, or marijuana,
society: Cool, Groovy, Hip, and
Square. The square is seldom if
ever cool. He is not "with it,"
that is, he doesn't know "what's
happening." But if he manages to
figure it out, he moves up a notch
to "hip."
DUKE and GONZO listen in disbelief.
DR. BLUMQUIST (CONT'D)
And if he can bring himself to
approve of what is happening, he
becomes "groovy." After that, with
much luck and perseverance, he can
rise to the rank of "cool." A cool
guy... cool guy... cool guy... - Hayes, on 10/12/2007, -3/+5http://www.duggmirror.com/tech_news/Video_What_the_RIAA_has_to_say_to_YOU_RIAA_speaks_at_ASU_campus/
- sroske, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1the whole thing might have been artificial.
- knivesreturns, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Even with a student population the size of ASU's more people would have shown up if it wouldn't have been for the crappy time, the crappy speaker, ect. I believe that most didn't show up due to apathy in one way or another. I would think that some students would have classes on tuesday/thursday and could have made it to this "seminar". I'm going to say apathy against the RIAA and for the continuation of their downloading "multi-media" files.
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