(no subject)
letter to my flist . . .
i'm sure this has been around the internet, but it was new to me & i laughed a long time . . . needed it, i guess . . .
here's the pic first - the subject on the email was "another chinese toy recalled"
____________________________________________________________________________
the riaa stuff (the tmi is underneath it) - my friend joseph byrd (you can find him on wikipedia here) long ago gave up trying to squeeze some royalties outta the record companies . . . he wrote this to a buncha friends today . . .
Good morning,
The publicity over the RIAA's victory over Jammie Thomas, a single working mother, and its trumpeting by the White House as a triumph of the protection of intellectual rights, has begun to work its way to the grass roots. The popular press has reported very little about the many cases where the RIAA has been rebuffed by the courts, nor of its refusal to obey court orders to disclose information which might be embarrassing or detrimental to future cases (which refusal in at least some instances has caused the judge to dismiss the action).
This may have a huge backlash; the Industry could have surely found a better target.
But now the fight is beginning to be recognized for what it is - the compounding of the determination of the music industry to refuse to deal with the reality of peer-to-peer file sharing, and its stubborn insistence that the public must pay $16 for a CD in order to listen to one song off it.
Here is a typical blog entry:
"What upsets me is this lady is now $220,000 in debt for sharing 24 songs. Yes, she shared more than that, but they only pursued 24 of them. That’s completely ludicrous. Are 24 songs really worth that much? I want to know how many times these songs were downloaded. Tracks sell for $.99 on iTunes, so in theory, each should have to have been downloaded over 9,300 times to justify that hefty price tag.
"Another way to look at this is that the music industry actually goes out of their way to make it difficult for people to purchase music and use it as they please. If you download it from someplace like iTunes, you’re locked down with DRM which limits what can be done with it. So maybe you’ll buy a CD. You can do anything you want with that, right? Well, according to Sony, if you rip the music and burn it to a mixed CD, you’ve just broken the law. Since you’re breaking the law anyway, why even bother paying for that CD when you can download it for free? Either way, you’re a criminal in the mind of the music industry.
What this judgment seems to have done on a grass roots level is to give expanded impetus to resistance. The single central site coordinating this resistance is http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
I know nothing about the people involved, but there is a mighty Goliath waiting to be destroyed, and any start is better than none.
I have gotten scant media notice for my letter to the Napster judge, claiming that record companies which keep "Hollywood" books, or which do not even pretend to pay royalties to 99% of their own artists, do not deserve the protection of copyright, since they themselves operate in a lawless territory.
Those few musicians who do get money from the RIAA companies tend to be 1) current hot properties, still generating income, or 2) enormously prestigious artists or legends…such as Yo Yo Ma, Beyonce, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, Wynton Marsalis, Elton John, Bela Fleck, Paul McCartney, Prince... (those few are paid far more than what their actual album sales might account for -a cheap price for deluding a credulous public). So for all the anti-establishment public stances those people might proclaim, they are all of them, in fact, lapdogs - the pampered, cosseted, perfumed whores - of the effete establishment.
Hey, I'm not blaming them…if someone had offered me total artistic freedom, endless promotion as "a voice of artistic freedom", and the wealth to have anything I want, and do anything I choose for the rest of my life, I'd be ready to get fitted for my collar.
And what of those who have actually gone to battle against the entertainment kleptocracy and won? Well, The Dixie Chicks seemed like a good example: they could afford the millions to file suit, have the SONY books audited, demand public disclosure of the corruption, and blow the entire establishment to hell. But what happened? They settled out of court (meaning no public disclosures, no airing of the filthy laundry, and no legal precedent!), and the did so for merely getting released from their contract, a new label of their own and a sweetheart distribution deal, plus about $20 million - chump change for SONY. And they are heralded as revolutionaries!
In any case, I'm certainly a tiny fish in this pond, though it's curious that I seem to have been the first person to go public with it, way back in 2000. As to my own music, I am pleased to have been even a minor factor in the evolution of popular music - and to my delight, one of the British bands that claim me as an influence is now - single-handed - trying to subvert the paradigm. (See Radiohead's new release, which is offered online, and you, the fan, get to decide how much to pay! Yeah, there are plenty of complaints about their less than ideal technology, but this, from the most respected band in Britain, is a statement.) And, just possibly, a tremor in the foundation of the monolith.
Oh well, I do rant on.
Joseph
Oh, BTW, this is a private letter, not for publication without authorization or payment.
__________________________________________________________________________________
me again . . .
tmi - i am having a very high pain day & pretty discouraged . .. my innards are aching awfully, and the knee/leg is really bad (gonna go back to the dr on thurs) & for all i know could be any of abt 73 things (arthritis anyone? lyme disease? torn ligaments?) various med folks have offered as possibilities . . . the knee brace isn't helping as much as i had hoped . . . the only thing that has helped is my acupuncturist stuck a hole in my ear (at the correct knee point, i assume!!) and bled it! it actually felt better for a day . . . well, the knee did, not my ear!
grump grump grump grump . . . the marching of little grumps across the screen . . why, it's almost like being . . .
i don't know why - i'd rather yummylovesuckknow stephen any day over ol' pitt . . .
i adore you all . . .
love,
s!
i'm sure this has been around the internet, but it was new to me & i laughed a long time . . . needed it, i guess . . .
here's the pic first - the subject on the email was "another chinese toy recalled"
____________________________________________________________________________
the riaa stuff (the tmi is underneath it) - my friend joseph byrd (you can find him on wikipedia here) long ago gave up trying to squeeze some royalties outta the record companies . . . he wrote this to a buncha friends today . . .
Good morning,
The publicity over the RIAA's victory over Jammie Thomas, a single working mother, and its trumpeting by the White House as a triumph of the protection of intellectual rights, has begun to work its way to the grass roots. The popular press has reported very little about the many cases where the RIAA has been rebuffed by the courts, nor of its refusal to obey court orders to disclose information which might be embarrassing or detrimental to future cases (which refusal in at least some instances has caused the judge to dismiss the action).
This may have a huge backlash; the Industry could have surely found a better target.
But now the fight is beginning to be recognized for what it is - the compounding of the determination of the music industry to refuse to deal with the reality of peer-to-peer file sharing, and its stubborn insistence that the public must pay $16 for a CD in order to listen to one song off it.
Here is a typical blog entry:
"What upsets me is this lady is now $220,000 in debt for sharing 24 songs. Yes, she shared more than that, but they only pursued 24 of them. That’s completely ludicrous. Are 24 songs really worth that much? I want to know how many times these songs were downloaded. Tracks sell for $.99 on iTunes, so in theory, each should have to have been downloaded over 9,300 times to justify that hefty price tag.
"Another way to look at this is that the music industry actually goes out of their way to make it difficult for people to purchase music and use it as they please. If you download it from someplace like iTunes, you’re locked down with DRM which limits what can be done with it. So maybe you’ll buy a CD. You can do anything you want with that, right? Well, according to Sony, if you rip the music and burn it to a mixed CD, you’ve just broken the law. Since you’re breaking the law anyway, why even bother paying for that CD when you can download it for free? Either way, you’re a criminal in the mind of the music industry.
What this judgment seems to have done on a grass roots level is to give expanded impetus to resistance. The single central site coordinating this resistance is http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/
I know nothing about the people involved, but there is a mighty Goliath waiting to be destroyed, and any start is better than none.
I have gotten scant media notice for my letter to the Napster judge, claiming that record companies which keep "Hollywood" books, or which do not even pretend to pay royalties to 99% of their own artists, do not deserve the protection of copyright, since they themselves operate in a lawless territory.
Those few musicians who do get money from the RIAA companies tend to be 1) current hot properties, still generating income, or 2) enormously prestigious artists or legends…such as Yo Yo Ma, Beyonce, Ry Cooder, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Fiona Apple, Wynton Marsalis, Elton John, Bela Fleck, Paul McCartney, Prince... (those few are paid far more than what their actual album sales might account for -a cheap price for deluding a credulous public). So for all the anti-establishment public stances those people might proclaim, they are all of them, in fact, lapdogs - the pampered, cosseted, perfumed whores - of the effete establishment.
Hey, I'm not blaming them…if someone had offered me total artistic freedom, endless promotion as "a voice of artistic freedom", and the wealth to have anything I want, and do anything I choose for the rest of my life, I'd be ready to get fitted for my collar.
And what of those who have actually gone to battle against the entertainment kleptocracy and won? Well, The Dixie Chicks seemed like a good example: they could afford the millions to file suit, have the SONY books audited, demand public disclosure of the corruption, and blow the entire establishment to hell. But what happened? They settled out of court (meaning no public disclosures, no airing of the filthy laundry, and no legal precedent!), and the did so for merely getting released from their contract, a new label of their own and a sweetheart distribution deal, plus about $20 million - chump change for SONY. And they are heralded as revolutionaries!
In any case, I'm certainly a tiny fish in this pond, though it's curious that I seem to have been the first person to go public with it, way back in 2000. As to my own music, I am pleased to have been even a minor factor in the evolution of popular music - and to my delight, one of the British bands that claim me as an influence is now - single-handed - trying to subvert the paradigm. (See Radiohead's new release, which is offered online, and you, the fan, get to decide how much to pay! Yeah, there are plenty of complaints about their less than ideal technology, but this, from the most respected band in Britain, is a statement.) And, just possibly, a tremor in the foundation of the monolith.
Oh well, I do rant on.
Joseph
Oh, BTW, this is a private letter, not for publication without authorization or payment.
__________________________________________________________________________________
me again . . .
tmi - i am having a very high pain day & pretty discouraged . .. my innards are aching awfully, and the knee/leg is really bad (gonna go back to the dr on thurs) & for all i know could be any of abt 73 things (arthritis anyone? lyme disease? torn ligaments?) various med folks have offered as possibilities . . . the knee brace isn't helping as much as i had hoped . . . the only thing that has helped is my acupuncturist stuck a hole in my ear (at the correct knee point, i assume!!) and bled it! it actually felt better for a day . . . well, the knee did, not my ear!
grump grump grump grump . . . the marching of little grumps across the screen . . why, it's almost like being . . .
i don't know why - i'd rather yummylovesuckknow stephen any day over ol' pitt . . .
i adore you all . . .
love,
s!