And it’s going to turn the music business upside down. So much of what now exists will evaporate. The game will be completely different. It will switch from one focused on sales to actual listening. Right now, Spotify is pioneering. It appears to be trumping its competitors, Rhapsody, MOG, Napster and Rdio. But the big behemoth Apple is waiting in the wings. If you study the history of the Cupertino company, it’s rarely first, that’s a recent phenomenon, it usually enters a sphere late, after the public is inured to the behavior, and Apple perfects it. Apple was late with CD burners, iTunes was not the first jukebox, the iPod was not the first MP3 player. But Apple employed design, both software and hardware, to create elegant solutions that were intuitive, simple to use, requiring no manual, and ultimately triumphed in the marketplace.

Don’t say Apple doesn’t rent, just look at movies and TV in the iTunes Store. Steve Jobs is famous for saying one thing and then doing another. Funny how he can change position and politicians cannot. Apple only strikes when the time is right, when a business can burgeon. Streaming is now here. Expect only one streaming service to triumph in America. Spotify has the early-mover advantage, but Apple has the installed base, and everybody’s credit card number. And when Apple moves, everybody knows overnight. Steve Jobs gets on stage and it’s bigger than any rock show. Furthermore, users spread the word and people trust Apple.

It makes no sense to own product. You want your music everywhere. Quality will improve with bandwidth. The ship has sailed. What does this mean for you?

1. It’s no longer about the initial sales transaction, but getting people to actually listen to your music. Your relationship doesn’t end when people buy your music, it begins when you get them to click.

2. It’s less about foraging for new customers than satiating old ones. An established fan streaming your track ten times is just as good and cheaper to accomplish than finding ten new fans to stream your track once.

3. Marketing and promotion are reminders to get people to stream as opposed to buy.

4. Historically, it’s been all about the release date. Stopping leaks and working everybody into a frenzy to buy the first week. Now you won’t care if a track leaks, you’ll just put it up on the streaming site and book revenue.

5. Sure, you’ll create events to stimulate streaming. But there will be many as opposed to few. And they’ll be more targeted. Today’s events reach many people who just don’t care. In the streaming future you’ll alert your fan base and then execute. Knowing who your fans are will be crucial. Whether it be Facebook, Twitter, e-mail or some unknown social network, you will go directly to fans. It will not be about pitching middlemen, print and TV and radio, to get the word out.

6. Recommendations will be key. When another band or a fan spreads the word via playlists, infecting new listeners. Radio is inefficient. It’s about advertising, not music. You want to be turned on to tracks by someone with the same sensibility, whose only goal is to turn you on to something great.

7. Playlist makers will be the new deejays. It comes down to who you trust. Anyone can publish, but not anyone can gain followers. Pandora and the like will fade, because they lack the human connection and their recommendation engine is just not as good.

8. You will get into business with he who can guarantee the most streams, not he who can pay you the most money. An advance means nothing. Marketing and promotion mean nothing without resultant streams.

9. There will be a streaming chart, which will cause people to check out winners. This will be determined by data, not influence. It won’t be about paying off the radio station, but reaching critical mass so that others will experiment by listening to you.

10. There will be multiple charts, based on newness and genre. Listeners will comb these to enrich their listening.

11. People will listen to more music than ever before. As a result, money will flow into other areas of the business, i.e. touring and merch.

12. Just because you can play, that does not mean you can win. Just because you’ve got your music on the streaming service, that does not mean anyone will listen to it.

13. Genre will no longer matter. You won’t complain that there’s no radio format for your track. Klezmer has equal footing with hip-hop. That does not mean as many people will listen to klezmer, just that the barrier to entry will be low.

14. To get people to continue to listen you will constantly release new material, make live material public, the album will become passe. It makes no sense to get everybody to listen for a short period of time, you don’t want one big bang, but a constant flood.

15. Every act will have its greatest hits. Album cuts will be for fans only. You will constantly produce, trying to reach the brass ring. You won’t care about the losers, that which does not gain traction. If you fail today, record and release tomorrow.

16. Creativity will burgeon. With it being so easy to get into the marketplace and be heard, risks will be taken.

17. You need someone to gain you attention, you don’t need someone to press and distribute, to get you on the radio, to pay off middlemen to get you exposed. The manager will be king. Record labels will fade. Tribes of like-minded artists are a better place to park your rear end than a conglomerate with a plethora of acts that don’t sound like you. You want synergy. It’s more important to be on the Bonnaroo or Lollapalooza playlist than be signed to the major.

18. Expect those with money and power to try and rig the game. I.e. major labels will try and game the system, generating plays and income for their acts. The streaming service will do its best to try and quash this behavior, but even Google has trouble weeding out those who try to optimize search.

Bob Lefsetz - The Lefsetz Letter-

Here’s’ how I got off alcohol and drugs, from an item  originally posted around January, 2009, in response to p2pnet reader axe.

“Most young people do not use drugs, and of those who do, the vast majority do not develop severe dependency issues. However when drug problems occur, easy access to specialist support is vital ” the BBC quotes Mitch Winehouse,  Amy’s father, as saying.

Mitch has announced he plans to set up the Amy Winehouse Foundation, to help other people  — and more power to him. Certainly,  rehabilitation resources are desperately needed not only in Britain, but everywhere. No problem if you have bags of money. Otherwise – problem. And if you doubt that, all you have to do is take a walk through the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver.

And drugs are not all — alcohol can be as bad.

Over the last few days, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about what apparently happened to Amy Winehouse when she died alone in her North London flat — and  it’s quite possible drugs and/or alcohol were involved.

2 – Getting hooked

In medical terminology, an addiction is a state in which the body relies on a substance for normal functioning and develops physical dependence, as in drug addiction. When the drug or substance on which someone is dependent is suddenly removed, it will cause withdrawal, a characteristic set of signs and symptoms.  Addiction is generally associated with increased drug tolerance says the Wikipedia. And, anyone can become an addict.

It doesn’t matter how smart they are, whether they’re rich or poor, black, white, famous or just an ordinary person, pink or purple, gay, straight or undecided. It makes absolutely no difference.  You can get hooked no matter who you are or what your station in life is.

People can become so bewitched by sex, gambling, stealing, eating chocolate (or anything else), they can’t live without it. Literally. The list of things men, women and even children, can become possessed by forms on the right, babe, as Mac The Knife might have said.

Amy Winehouse wasn’t the first to die, and she and won’t be the last. Because all addictions have have one thing in common: they start off being fun. But that doesn’t last for long. Soon, they can’t be denied.

A distinction is usually made between alcohol and drug addiction but really, they’re the same.

And it’s common (usual?) for people hooked on drugs to also have an alcohol dependency, and vice versa.

At first, addicts believe they’re in control, that they can quit any time they want. But soon, they’re fixated, completely overpowered by an obsession which, in spite of cycles of relapse and remission, can never be satisfied or controlled.

With chemical addictions, when the drug and/or alcohol is stopped, withdrawal can result in horrifying hallucinations, wracking pain, total disorientation, an inability to control the bladder or bowels, and the ’shakes’, the violent body tremours.

And that’s the good part. Cold turkey can, and frequently does, result in death.

Is addiction a disease? Or is it caused by something missing in the body’s physical or mental make-up?

Does it matter? Either way, slowly but surely, addicts’ lives spiral out of control, damaging the people around them almost as much as themselves.

3 – Anything to get stoned

I was born in north London, England, in the middle of World War II.

My family – my mother, Betty, father, Ed, brother, Michael (a year younger than me) and I moved to Canada when I was about three.

My father was in some way involved in the development of the CF100, Canada’s first jet fighter.

I don’t know what his role was, but I remember him showing us grainy black-and-white photos of the jet.

When Michael and I were about six and seven, my father sent us and our mother back to England for a holiday. While we were over there, he cleared off, leaving my mother, a former dancer, to find a way to make a living, and rear two young boys.

We eventually wound up living in a cottage in a small village called Sandgate on the English Channel, just down the road from Folkestone, Kent. When the sea was stormy, the waves would hurl pebbles from the beach crashing down the chimney.

One day, when I was about 13, I was strolling along the seafront, doing nothing in particular. I passed by a parked lorry and noticed it’s back was open, revealing crates of liquor. I stole a bottle, of Bell’s (I still remember the name) whiskey, stuffed it down the front of my shirt, and went home. My mother was out and so I went to my bedroom, poured some of the whiskey into a glass and, choking and gasping, drank it. The fumes were almost overpowering, it tasted awful. But I forced it down and almost instantly, got a buzz. A minute later, I threw up. But the buzz remained. So I drank some more and this time, kept it down.

Then I layed on my bed, going into a reverie of fantastic dreams in which I was the hero. Then I passed out. I don’t remember what I did with the rest of the whiskey. But I probably drank it.

4 – 2-phenyl-3-methyl-tetrahydro-1, 4-oxazine-hydrochloride

Fast forward.

I’m now 17, a sales clerk at Curry’s, a radio shop in Folkestone. And, I can’t do without alcohol, although I haven’t realized it, yet.

My girl-friend’s mother’s lodger is a Pfizer rep. He introduces me to Preludin – 2-phenyl-3-methyl-tetrahydro-1, 4-oxazine-hydrochloride – a weight-loss product banned long ago and once popular with The Beatles.

I also discover Benzedrex Inhalers which, at that time but not any more, had amphetamine as one of the ingredients. The plastic tubes with bullet shaped ends were filled with a pink, evil smelling packing. Swallowing the stuff made me gag gag. And the taste! But what the hell, eh? It got me where I wanted to go. And a pint or 10 of beer took the taste away and got me even higher.

A few years later, I’m the manager of the rock bandcalled The Lonely Ones (our lead guitar player Noel Redding, went on to play bass for the Jimmy Hendrix Experience). That’s when I’m introduced to marijuana – altered consciousness was where it was and everyone was into it.

Aged 30, I’m a hard-core piss artist and a devoted user of anything-that’ll-get-me-high. Or low. Depending on the circumstances.

I’m now thoroughly hooked on alcohol and marijuana, but still functioning. Kind of.  Half the time I can’t remember what I did yesterday.

But who cares? Mere detail.

5 – Scraping the gunk from the bong bowl

Fast forward once again to 1987. A typical day went like this …

Surface. Could be AM or PM.

Grope around for the bottle of cheap sherry I put on the floor beside me last night,just before I passed out.  Swallow half to kill the shakes before they start.

Throw up.

Swallow the other half.

Light a joint if I have one.

If I don’t, search for roaches, or scrape the gunk from the bong bowl.

Success or not, get dressed and start the rounds, looking for someone to scrounge off.

Score cash by various means,legal and illegal. Doesn’t matter which.

Buy two bottles of sherry, one now, one for tomorrow.

Go into a restaurant washroom, lock door, down half a bottle.

Leave restaurant.

Score dope.

Eat.

Or maybe not.

Go into a pub until last shout.

Hang out in a library or park or some such, depending on time of year.

When it’s opening time again, go into a pub and sit there until throw-out time. Go back to wherever I’m crashing.

Crash.

Start all over again.

6 – Peace and calm

Then one day I decide I’ve had enough.

I wake up, drink the sherry, throw up, drink the other half.

But this time I have a plan and I know it’s going to be a beautiful, glorious day.

And here’s why.

It’ll be my last day.

So this time, I blow all my cash on a mega-bottle of booze and a lot of Aspirin. Or maybe it was something else.

I experience a vast, wonderful feeling of peace and calm.

Because there won’t be any more days like yesterday. And there won’t be any tomorrows.

And I can clearly remember that day, even more than 20 years later.

But someone comes back early.

I end up in a downtown hospital and the staff figure if I survive at all, I’ll be a vegetable.

And that’s when I stop. Right?

Not.

I keep it up for another six months and then I end up in the Donwood Institute in Toronto, a REHAb hospital that’s now closed, unfortunately for people like me.

7 – Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery

My experiences before, during and after would fill a book – a book no one would believe – and it takes me years to get back on my feet again.

With the unswerving help of Liz, who’s now my wife.

And Rick, who stuck by me through it all.

And Brian from Hugs not Drugs, happy again as a teacher.

And Kathleen K, who’s now somewhere in the US having been terribly injured in Afghanistan by a roadside bomb.

And other people, of course.

I go to Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings and I hear people describing their new lives and I think to myself, This can never be me.

But after a while, I’m far enough away from my last drink or toke to begin to understand a few things. While you’re using,  only one aspect of yourself is allowed to exist.

And this part of you has only one interest.

Getting stoned.

I used to believe I couldn’t do any of the things I did while I was using. Play guitar. Draw. Write. But I was wrong.

I could go on, but there’s a bottom line, and it’s this:

None of us has any more than the one single minute of time that’s our life. And knowing that, we can survive anything. Anything at all.

We can’t resist a drink. Or a smoke.

Or a bar of chocolate for a week.

Or day.

Or an hour.

But we can do it for the minute we’re in.

And the minute after that.

And the minute after that.

It seems dumb. But think about it.

All you have is right now, it’s all you’ve ever had, and it’s never been any other way.
And right now, there’s nothing that can defeat you.

p2pnet view –

Going from being an addict to being straight is one of the hardest things to do, and in the end, it seems it was too much for Amy.

In January, Amy Winehouse’s husband, Blake Fielder-Civil said he was afraid Amy would be be dead before the summer unless she did something about her addictions.

Rehab Lyrics:

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been black but when I come back you’ll know know know
I ain’t got the time and if my daddy thinks I’m fine
He’s tried to make me go to rehab but I won’t go go go

I’d rather be at home with ray
I ain’t got seventy days
Cause there’s nothing
There’s nothing you can teach me
That I can’t learn from Mr Hathaway

I didn’t get a lot in class
But I know it don’t come in a shot glass

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been black but when I come back you’ll know know know
I ain’t got the time and if my daddy thinks I’m fine
He’s tried to make me go to rehab but I won’t go go go

The man said ‘why do you think you here’
I said ‘I got no idea
I’m gonna, I’m gonna lose my baby
so I always keep a bottle near’
He said ‘I just think you’re depressed,
this me, yeah baby, and the rest’

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been black but when I come back you’ll know know know

I don’t ever wanna drink again
I just ooh I just need a friend
I’m not gonna spend ten weeks
have everyone think I’m on the mend

It’s not just my pride
It’s just ’til these tears have dried

They tried to make me go to rehab but I said ‘no, no, no’
Yes I’ve been black but when I come back you’ll know know know
I ain’t got the time and if my daddy thinks I’m fine
He’s tried to make me go to rehab but I won’t go go go

Jon Newton – p2pnet

p2pnet view -

Read on …  [Last August] U2 general factotum Paul (right) McGuinness came up with a scheme he said would restore the moribund corporate music industry.

In a 2008 speech at in Cannes, McGuinness “called on governments to compel ISPs to introduce mandatory ‘three strike’ service disconnections to end unauthorized downloading, and specifically accused companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it, and of being makers of burglary kits who have made a thieves’ charter to steal money from the music industry”, says a Wikipedia article. He “called on governments to compel ISPs to introduce mandatory ‘three strike’ service disconnections to end unauthorized downloading, and specifically accused companies such as Apple, Google, Yahoo!, Oracle, and Facebook of building multi billion dollar industries on the back of our content without paying for it, and of being makers of burglary kits who have made a thieves’ charter to steal money from the music industry”, said a Wikipedia article.

Now, in a puff atorial published ‘The end of ‘free’ is sweet music for artists’ in the golbe and nail, which never loses an opportunity to slag Canada as a nation of  filesharing pirates, he writes “Three years ago, somewhere between U2’s No Line on the Horizon album and the 360 Degree world tour, I plunged into the raging debate over the future of music in the age of ‘free.’ Calling his self-serving bilge a campaign, he continues, “In many countries, Internet service providers have consistently and stubbornly resisted co-operation.

He continues, “Now comes good news, however, from the world’s largest entertainment market – the United States. The biggest U.S. ISPs have just agreed with the music and film industries to introduce a new system of “copyright alerts.” These are warnings that, with escalating urgency, aim to nudge broadband users away from piracy toward downloading and streaming music from legitimate services. There will be the prospect of deterrent sanctions for those who repeatedly ignore the warnings, which is a crucial distinction from the voluntary agreement that exists in Canada.

“This has been agonizingly slow in coming, but it is an important step forward in the international debate over music in the digital age. The idea of ISPs taking on obligations to stop copyright theft on their networks is moving into the mainstream.

The United States is not the first country where ISPs have started to co-operate with rights holders. Similarly sensible thinking broke out in France in 2007, thanks to President Nicolas Sarkozy. France, along with a growing number of other countries such as South Korea and New Zealand, has introduced a so-called graduated response law, obliging ISPs to take pro-active steps to help curb copyright abuse. Britain has passed its Digital Economy Act, which, if implemented effectively, will go down a similar route.

Different countries will approach this their own way, and there can be no one model for exactly how ISPs get involved. The U.S. agreement is a voluntary private-sector deal – elsewhere, the route almost certainly needs to be different. In virtually all other countries, private negotiations have proved worse than fruitless, leaving legislation as the only route possible.

Why is the needle on the move? First, no doubt because “free” is no longer just a problem for the music industry. Film studios, book publishers and newspapers are all now in the same storm, caught in a race against the clock to sort out successful business models before being sunk by illegal file-sharing or other forms of “free.”

Another reason is that it is now impossible to argue, as many used to, that there is a purely market-based solution to piracy. The music industry has led the field with new models for consumers – there are more than 470 digital music services worldwide, many of them “free to consumer” sites such as Spotify and We7. None of these services has much hope of long-term success while competing in a world where, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, 95 per cent of all music downloads are illegal.

For some years, “fighting free with free” seemed the answer to all our problems. That honeymoon is over. Spotify, which is in many European countries the champion of free-to-consumer music streaming, is now cutting back on its free offering. It is trying to migrate its fans into payers, offering a $15 monthly subscription. That is a huge challenge.

Like newspapers, which have hastened to erect website pay walls they prematurely abandoned years ago, the music industry has discovered the inconvenient truth that “free” does not really pay. It cannot sustain the artist royalties, the copyright fees and the investment that makes an artist’s career possible in the first place.

And that is the fundamental problem: Who will fund the future of music? This is not an issue that directly affects a band like U2, of course. Yet I still don’t see a clear answer to the question I asked in my maiden “ISP speech” three years ago – in a world of 95-per-cent piracy, where is the investment going to come from to fund the next generation?

To me, the answer is clear. A thriving music business needs a fair, responsible environment to work in, and ISPs, the Internet’s gatekeepers, hold the key to this. By the graduated response approach and other measures like systematically blocking infringing websites they can significantly reduce digital piracy. Surveys, the latest by Hadopi in France in May, prove what should be obvious: that when people see rules protecting copyright being enforced, they actually change their behaviour.

No one expects teenagers brought up in the age of LimeWire to convert overnight to legal download sites. Yet the migration to legitimate ways of enjoying music, respecting copyright owners, will happen over time.

The U.S. ISP agreement is good news for music and the creative industries. It is time now for action elsewhere. Michel Barnier, the European Union’s internal market commissioner, is reviewing copyright enforcement rules for the digital age. This is a chance for Europe to use its legislative clout to get ISPs to co-operate.

Other governments have long been debating their own approaches. Now is the time to stop the thumb-twiddling and the soul-searching. ISPs need to be active partners, not bystanders, in shaping a legitimate Internet where artists and creators can be sustained by their work. In the United States, they have made a welcome voluntary step in that direction. Elsewhere, it will need the pressure of government and

It’s ironic he should use the word free in the title of his piece since 2, The Irish  band he Representsrepresents represents are accused of being Income tax Dodgers Plunge? Actually, he’s been blathering on since the year dot.

This time, his diatribe was sparked by This time by news of a memorandum of understanding on the parts of the RIAA and MPAA, the two’ trade’ outfits by the corporate movie and music cartels.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

p2pnet view | P2P |

Her account was suspended Thursday due to “multiple or severe violations of YouTube’s copyright policy.“

 (Cheers Filip)

I’ll try to do a better job in a follow-up.

In the meanwhile, it now appears the RIAA and the MPAA are teaming up in a collusive “Memorandum of understanding” for ISPs, which calls for the signing ISPs to assist the Big 4 record companies and the Big 6 motion picture companies in enforcing their copyrights, in ways never contemplated by the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, says my friend Ray Beckerman in Recording industry vs the people, going on, “I haven’t had time to analyze it yet (it’s 36 pages), but at first glance it made me kind of ill, in that it appeared to:

- violate the antitrust laws of the federal government and of various states,
- constitute abuse of copyright,
- expand the lawful copyright monopoly into an unlawful monopoly,
- overlook the First Amendment,
- overlook the fair use defense and other defenses afforded by copyright law,
- conflict with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.”

Ray in turn credits Bruce Gain, an investigative tech writer.

The Age also as has a post on the memorandum.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

Then, in November, 2005, I wrote “But still very, very cool, nothing much has changed.” At the time, very few mainstream artist agreed with me. However, as far as I’m concerned it’s still all about sharing. And caring.

Anyhow, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) has been online forever and these days, “virtually anyone can take a midi file and using a program such as Garage Band or Reason create a near studio quality rendition of their favorite song,” says -1-Lone_Eagle on slashdot.

“This opens up an interesting discussion, is a remixed midi file an original creation? Or is it simply a copied work with the rights belonging to the original author? Is it Piracy? What do you think?”

“So what do you think?…  At last, a singer with brains!”

That was my friend and p2pnet host Cliff Haerden at multibox.be over in Belgium. In a recent email, he was talking about Joss Stone, pointing to Dumpen Maar featuring a video of Stone singing the praises of sharing.

I did a story on it three years ago, but her message stands:

Interviewer: What do you think about piracy, about mp3, about the internet, about music?

Stone: I think it’s great.

Interviewer: Great?

Stone: Yeh. I love it. I think it’s brilliant, and I’ll tell you why. Music should be shared. I believe this is how music turned into like some crazy business. Now, the only part about music that I dislike is the business that’s attached to it. Now, if music is free, there’s no business. There is , however, “So I like it. I think that we should share it.There is, however, a Big Music organisation wholly dedicated to screwing, bluing and Tatooing as many music lovers as it can identify Led by functionaries Mitch Bainwol, and Cary Sherman (http://www.p2pnet.net/story/51072) Purporting to represent artists, it’s called the Recording Industry Association of America its entire raison d’être is to screw, as many music lovers as it can identify.

It’s OK. “If one person buys it, it’s totally cool. Burn it up. Share it with your friends. I don’t care. I don’t care how you hear it as long as you hear it; as long as you come to my show and have a great time and listen to the live show. It’s totally cool.

Interviewer: I think you are the first singer telling this story to me.

Stone: Yeh, because most people are, um, (”brainwashed”, from someone sitting beside her) yeah, they’ve been brainwashed – definitely, a perfect word for it.

Sharing is caring.

A while back, with UK singer Billy Bragg, I tried to start a site dedicated to putting artists and their fans together for their mutual benefit. It was called a2f2a — short for artists-to-fans-to-artists. It ultimately disintegrated, although what’s left of it is still online. What started it was the Featured Artists Coalition / Lily Allen Three Strikes and you’re Off the Net debacle, with Allen in the starring role, closely followed by the FAC.

“File sharing’s not okay for British music,” Allen had blogged in a post picked up by the mainstream media and trumpeted around the world. “We need to find new ways to help consumers access and buy music legally, but saying file sharing’s fine is not helping anyone — and definitely not helping British music,” she’d declared. “I want to get people working together to use new digital opportunities to encourage new artists.”

I’d posted that I’d definitely agree with the last part. It’s one of the reasons Billy and I started a2f2a.com. The other is, contrary to corporate music industry statements, online music fans would love to pay artists, as long as they know the money is going to them.

Now Stone, a UK soul singer who played Anne of Cleves, Henry VIII’s wife # 4 in The Tudors (right) series, has thrown herself into the file sharing menage telling the Press Association >>>

“She’s [Lily Allen] not going to win [the] fight [over downloads]. None of us will win that fight. So let’s just accept it and see it as something that can be beautiful and might change music for the better. It might sort the weeds from the flowers.”

Meanwhile, back then, Canadian singer Joni Mitchell declared >>>

“I’ve been screwed from the beginning. The deal that I got was just atrocious. I mean, it was like slave labor. And I’ve never really had a good deal in the business. I hope it all goes down the crapper. It’s top-heavy, it’s wasteful. It’s an insane business.”

Now, this is all calculated music. It’s calculated for sales, it’s sonically calculated, it’s rudely calculated. I’m ashamed to be a part of the music business. You know, I just think it’s a cesspool.”

She was referring to the corporate part, of course.

As to the rest, the online P2P sharing communities aren’t going away.

In another post check out Justin Frankel’s NinJam. It doesn’t support MIDI yet, but Frankel says it will.

Jon Newton – p2pnet

p2pnet view P2P | Freedom | Entertainment |

The Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to mark up tomorrow (Thursday) S. 968, the Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011. In advance of that session, 13 groups today sent a letter to Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and senior committee Republican Charles Grassley (R-IA) outlining their concerns about the bill.

Primary among the objections are:

1) The bill continues to allow Internet Service Providers to interfere with Doman Name look up services (DNS). “We continue to believe that such a provision would be ineffective and runs contrary to the US government’s commitment to advancing a single, global Internet,” the groups said.

2) The inclusion of “information local tools,” as subject to the bill’s provisions, “makes nearly every actor on the Internet potentially subject to enforcement orders under the bill, raising new policy questions regarding government interference with online activity and speech.”

The text of the letter is here.

Art Brodsky – Communications Director
http://www.publicknowledge.org

(202) 861-0020 ext 103 (o) • (301) 908-7715 (c)
1818 N St., NW Suite 410, Washington, D.C. 20036

Thanks for that, Art!

Devil’s Advocate – p2pnet

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First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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My friend, Lee Ballinger from Rock And Rap Confidential (www.rockrap.com), tipped me off last week to a study by an executive compensation consultant in DC that showed the highest paid executive at a Washington DC based trade association was none other than RIAA President Cary Sherman, who, according to the study, raked in an astonishing $3,185,026 in 2009.  This number was confirmed by a review of the IRS-990 informational return filed by the RIAA, which is available for review at www.guidestar.com (free registration required).  As Lee pointedly noted, this compensation worked out to $1,521.36 an hour for Mr. Sherman.   What makes the number even more remarkable is that it represents a 240% increase over his 2008 salary, which was a relatively paltry $1.331 million.

Sherman overtook CEO Mitch Bainwol, who “only” took home $1.614 million in 2009, which was actually $400,000 less than he made in 2008.  Bainwol must have started working half-days or something. 

Other executives did well by themselves in 2009.   11 others made more than $200,000, including Mitch Glazier,  who jumped from an $80,000 job as a House Judiciary Committee staffer to a $500,000 a year job with the RIAA just weeks after somebody on the committee staff pulled a fast one on the Committee and inserted three lines in an unrelated telecommunications bill which magically turned every sound recording ever made in the US into a “work for hire,” thus preserving, forever, ownership of those recordings in the hands of (surprise!) the major labels.  Glazier and the RIAA deny there was any connection between the bill (which took two years, several million dollars and the invention of the Recording Artists Coalition to reverse) and Glazier’s job.   Of course there wasn’t.  Coincidences like that happen all the time beyond the looking glass.

I’m sure that the 10 people who lost their jobs at the RIAA over the year are comforted by the fact that Sherman and the rest of their former bosses are doing so well without them, but you have to wonder what went into the decision to award the surviving executives nearly a million dollars in “bonus and incentive compensation,” almost two-thirds of which went to Bainwol and Sherman alone.

After all, it’s not like they’re doing a great job.   From 2007 to 2009, they showed “anti-piracy restitution” revenue of a grand sum of under $1.25 million.  During that time, the returns show they spent in excess of $30 million in outside counsel fees to collect that money by suing individual alleged  downloaders.  Given that the usual reason given for the litigation blitz was educational, rather than punitive, and given that unauthorized file sharing neither stopped or slowed down, this really doesn’t seem like it was a victory.  And when you consider that the RIAA made more revenue from selling it’s certifications for gold and platinum records, they could probably have made more money by buying CDs with that $30 million and creating more hit records to certify.  (Given AFTRA’s newfound interest in getting a share of the LimeWire recovery, you have to wonder why the union has never publicly demanded a “fair share” of that $1.25 million for their artists, but that’s another story for another day.)

But beyond the “sue our customers into destitution” campaign, there is another failure that make those compensation and bonus numbers look even more odd.

Remember the Performance Rights Act?

This was the great legislative initiative of the past two years, in which the RIAA hid behind the more “artist-friendly” SoundExchange (who we know are artist friendly because they keep telling us they’re artist friendly, despite having accumulated over a quarter billion dollars of undistributed royalties that are owed to their “friends,” but that’s still another story for still another day) which created a lobbying front called musicFIRST which was designed to give SoundExchange the right to negotiate, collect, allocate and distribute performance royalties from terrestrial radio.  It was clear from the beginning, that the “we love recording artists” rhetoric was pure hogwash, because the initial bills presented to both the House and Senate both included language that would have permitted the labels to be paid the performance royalties directly, and leaving the artists to look to the labels to get their “share.”  The AFM and AFTRA both endorsed these bills, despite the fact that the original language would have royally screwed over their members, showing just how much independent thought was going into the whole bill from the union side (Still another story.)  And this was truly a case of “fool me twice, shame on me,” because those union reps were endorsing the same language that allowed the record labels to collect royalties directly on non-statutory settlements on satellite and Internet music broadcasts.

A quick shuffle of papers and the House version of the bill was amended to provide some protection to artists, but the Senate version never was.  If both bills had passed, the differences would have been worked out in conference committee, at which time the Senate version could have been adopted without blinking, providing political cover to those House members embarrassed by the revelation their bill was going to screw the artists everyone professed to love.

But a funny thing happened on the way to a full vote.  Congress got cold feet, like they often do when it looks like they’re going to be forced to choose between two groups that both contribute a lot of money to their re-election campaigns.  They told musicFIRST and the National Association of Broadcasters (probably the only lobbying group that could rival the RIAA for sheer bullying strength) to sit down and negotiate a royalty structure between them.

And it ended up going nowhere.

At one point, it looked like they actually had a deal.  The NAB was willing to accept the principal of a terrestrial radio performance royalty if the RIAA was willing to endorse legislation that would require every cell phone from every cell phone manufacturer to include an FM radio chip. 

Unfortunately for the deal makers, nobody bothered to check with the cell phone manufacturers, who, for obvious reasons, thought a mandated FM chip was a lousy idea.  They threatened to release their own 800 pound lobbying gorilla into the fray, turning the battle over the performance royalty into a three-way death cage match.

And there things sat until January 3, 2011, when the House and Senate versions of the bills died with the end of the 111^th Congress.  It has not been re-introduced.  But the RIAA  haven’t let the grass grow under their feet.  Nosirree!  Last month, during their traditional Grammy week lobbying blitz, there was Mitch Bainwol standing arm in arm with his new best friends; the CTIA-Wireless Association and The Consumer Electronics Association, both of whom represent cell phone makers.  With all the passion of the new convert, Bainwol made nice with his buddies and explained that the very deal struck by the very organization, musicFIRST, controlled by the organization he runs, the RIAA, made “zero sense,” now that he and the RIAA had seen the light, that is.

The RIAA can be as two-faced as its membership demands, and the RIAA clearly can spend their own money as they please, so if they want to grant huge bonuses for this kind of minimal executive achievement, that’s entirely their right.  After all, they’re not SoundExchange, who likes to pretend that a board stocked with “artist representative” members handpicked by the RIAA actually cares about artists because it is spending their money to achieve what the RIAA wants.  To me, the disparity between those executive salaries and what the RIAA has utterly failed to accomplish under the leadership of those getting those salaries is simply a demonstration that the RIAA continues to not “get it.”  Times have changed.  The environment has changed.  The RIAA has not, and they are apparently unaware of their growing irrelevance in the business of actually creating music.  What they know about is the need to maintain power and control.  What they don’t seem to know is how to accomplish that.  

Imagine what those bonuses and incentives would have been had they actually done what they wanted to do!

Fred Wilhelms - Associate Editor, p2pnet

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Even still, this is based on the flawed premise that ”making available” is some new infringement of copyright. The target selection for domain seizures can be empirically validated by the actual list of domains seized. This is the cost-efficient manner in which these dinosaurs are plundering arts, culture, privacy and freedom of speech. Extending copyright, retroactively expanding copyright, influencing copyright legislation and in some cases, simply writing the law for them.

See: New Zealand, Canada, Ireland, United Kingdom, France, Sweden, India, Spain and Australia.

Doesn’t that bother you? Amerikan corporate plutocracy is telling YOUR government what information you can access, and when, where, and how you can have access to it. Sure, there is infringing material mixed in, but if you think like the MAFIAA, then everything can be used to infringe. Let’s ban the harddrive, it could potentially be used to store copyright infringing material. The very nature of computer hardware is designed to make digital copies, either from scratch, or copied, and copied, and copied, and copied. The very essence of the digital age is distribution of knowledge in the form of text, voice, music and video.

Attempts to make “streaming”, as they are trying to define actual downloading, a felony can only be defined as a ridiculous stretch of authority. Firstly, there is no such thing as “streaming”. If you copy 10 files, each 100mb, from one drive to another, and can open the first copied file while the other 9 are being transferred, then that is streaming. This is why they are seizing the domains they are seizing. They cannot make a legal argument that merely linking to infringing material is in itself infringing, this again is “making available” and not an actual infringement. The MAFIAA knows millions and millions of internet users are violating their copyrights, they have no choice but to go after the intermediaries using unlawful means to set a “behavioral” precedent. “If nobody complains, they must be guilty”, is the impression they want. Hence, no adversarial hearings prior to the seizures. How dare anyone have a conflicting opinion on what is and is not infringing that is not in jack-boot lock-step compliance with MAFIAA bullshit! This also enforces the “view” that “streaming” is “making available” is a copyright infringement.

The reason the MAFIAA like their buzz-words is because they can make the leap of faith from streaming to broadcasting, which is a copyright violation. The biggest logic flaw in all of their arguments has been the lack of ability to actually show any proof that something was copied. Sure they can scrape IPs from a bittorrent stream, but have they proven in fact, the entire copyrighted material was even completely transferred? Have they proven the copied file was in fact an exact replication of the original in question? I won’t even bring up forensics and chain of custody when IFPI can simply walk into an ISP in Europe and demand harddrives from another of the ISP customers without due cause or legal backing. This, my comrades, is theft.

Rarely does a judge in the US courts question the validity of proof offered by the MAFIAA in litigation. The old “trust us, it must be happening, it’s just too haaaaaarrrrrdd to actually prove, your honor”. This is why the MAFIAA is going after the intermediaries. To attempt to make a “social” stigma stick, rather than a legal one. 3rd parties are easier to find, can be crushed in litigation, and more importantly, can be eliminated from the pool of competition.

What a great thing that is copyright. A monopolistic suspension of your actual rights for a copy privilege. Copyright is not a right, it is a Constitutional privilege originally designed to protect printers in the 18th century by suspending your inalienable rights for a government granted monopoly. This made sense when it took 1 week to print several books, not including binding and distribution. Today, I can write a book and distribute it the same day with infinite copies. So, if it used to take a long time to create and distribute, which is what I am under the impression the monopoly was created for, then how does extending copyright work? You can make works available faster, cheaper and in infinite supply, therefore copyright should be more restricted not extended. How does that improve the preservation of arts or culture?

Oh, piracy is killing the industry. Oh, we just had another record-breaking year of eye-popping profits, during a recession, war, global unrest and unemployment higher than since the great depression and Truman. It’s all about the grips, and wardrobe, the caterers, van drivers, make-up artists, SAG, SWG and all the other little guys that are losing their jobs because of piracy. You don’t really expect humanity to believe that shit do you? Everyone on that list got paid, you (MAFIAA) paid them, they are either salary and/or commission based, and were paid for whatever video/show/movie they worked. Then you got paid by the market placement in said video/show/movie by the highest bidder. Then you hocked your other crappy movies in unstoppable advertisements on purchased media. You got paid when the show aired on TV in broadcast/syndication/advertisement rights/kickbacks.

Movies used to be rated for 30 days years ago, nowadays movies are compared by “opening day” box office sales. So, after overinflating the price of a movie like Drive Angry with Nicholas Cage to the tune of 40 million usd, opening day was 36 million usd, and I am quite sure you made up the difference of 4 million after another day or so. This is a neat business model. Make a fucking shitty movie, slap a big name on it, give him 20 million for a couple of weeks work, have a local high school do the special effects for you, and bam, you get to pocket, what, 20-50 million? And that is not even counting DVD sales, when that window comes, and then the BluRay window, oh, and I forgot, the mandatory 30-day rental window.

The decision to switch from 30 days to opening day was simple. In the 21st Century, people can get information at the speed of light now. Shitty movies are ousted as shitty much more efficiently than in days of old. Box office sales for shitty movies drop dramatically once the word gets out, so instead of having the top 10 movies over 30 days, which would probably be a listing of movies well over 30 days old, have the top 10 movies opening weekend. Now that makes for a pretty chart. Hollywood’s answer? Fuck em, let’s make all movies shitty, then the chart will look even better. We can bang out a good one like Avatar or The Black Knight with an innovative storyline/script/RtB but only in the summer, when all the kids are out of school and are bugging their parents to take them to the theaters.

With decades and decades of customer abuse under your belts, the DRM, the rootlets, destruction of hackers you should have hired, the release windows, shitty 3D, legal shenanigans, bribes, creative accounting, overpaid CEOs, serious lack of legal alternatives and general assholedness towards consumers, I have to beg the question..

Who is the real pirate?

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The litigation has resulted in an agreement, sealed of course, between the RIAA and LimeWire, et al. The RIAA doesn’t want a precedent set that could potentially eliminate the ability to pursue the CEO of whatever new innovation comes along that the RIAA doesn’t like. MP3Tunes, OINK, IsoHUNT and others know what it feels like to innovate, and then be crushed by the legal might of dinosaur industry leaders who refuse to adapt their business model.

One interesting point that Mike Masnick of TechDirt constantly makes that is incredibly relevant is this; Has anti-piracy efforts improved sales? Very succinct and direct approach to this particular metric. ROI some businesses call it, return on investment. First there was Ireland rolling over like the French in WWII, spying on its’ internet customers at the behest of the MAFIAA, then HADOPI in France. Obviously this was forced on the French due to a celebrity polishing Sarkozy’s helmet, and not because it was even relevant, effective, useful or wanted by the French people. In fact, I think there were a few polls and demonstrations against it. And now look at what a shining light of proactive anti-piracy effectiveness in action. Sony spent more on R&D for BluRay DRM than they did on the security servers hosting the PlayStation Network. Think about that for a second, and you will realize where their priorities lie.

So, LimeWire lost. Another incentive for distributed technology. DNS is now under attack from DHS/ICE, which is not even in their mandate, and with the UN requesting the US release control over ICANN, public outcry about violations of constitutional rights, seizing domains that have been legally defined in a court of law in that country as, well, legal, not to omit placing defamatory accusations that over 80,000 sub-domain web sites were seized due to being CP related. Even if this even lasted minutes, instead of days, it should constitute actionable litigation against the US GOV.

Again, another reason to migrate to OpenDNS or other alternative that does not censor. The NSA said it best when they warned that the more you invade the privacy of others, the more measures they will take to inhibit your efforts. The more pressure that is put on centralized systems, will invariably force innovation away from it and more towards decentralized systems that cannot be affected. The internet sees censorship as a roadblock and simply routes around it.

And finally, TorrentFreak has a great article about bittorrent traffic increase reported by Sandvine, a Canadian-based broadband management company, amazingly NOT owned by the MAFIAA. It shows how impressive your 8-year litigation against LimeWire produced such an immense increase in physical and digital sales… oh wait, no it didn’t!  They all moved to bittorrent. And when it takes you 8 more years to litigate away bittorrent, there will be something else already waiting. Congratulations RIAA, one less mole, superb use of resources, and an incredible boost to your coven on artists. Oh wait!… the artists’ get nothing? The 105 million will go back into investing additional anti-piracy efforts and the artists get nothing?

Impressive, most impressive.

You know, mp3Tunes and GrooveShark started with less than 105 million. I bet you could have built a great Last.FM for that kinda money. Until then I will use AudioHijack and streamed free music in iTunes, and pay for ‘other’ services, like bandwidth, to access the buffet, instead of your little expensive continental breakfast.

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I firmly believe Fred’s presence will add a new dimension to p2pnet. As Dave Marsh noted a while back on his blog CounterPunch , “Fred Wilhelms… would be the [music] industry’s ethicist-in-chief if the industry had ethics. “It should be noted Fred has agreed to take this task on although he is seriously ill from pancreatic cancer.

I should also thank DA for the help he has given both myself and my wife, by contributing his time to handle the admin side of p2pnet and to post articles, and in particular for dealing with the QuantServe/GoogleAnalytics mess. Further thanks go out to anybody and everybody who has contributed anything in the way of posts or comments. Finally, I’d also like to thank everyone for their good wishes and I hope to be back in action in the very near future.

For anyone who has not been following events, I suffered two heart attacks which necessitated quadruple heart bypass surgery. I also suffered a stroke while I was on the operating table, which has meant I lost 80% of my vision, as well as other associated problems.

Finally, I would like to thank my wife Elizabeth for keeping the flag flying and maintaining contact with readers and contributors.

That’s all for now folks, I hope to be posting again in the very near future.

Jon - p2pnet

“The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.”   – Banksy (via Eric Smith)

“Cuts like a knife, as Bryan Adams would say…

Truth resonates. And this does. Especially about artists.

In New York City there’s a culture of critics who make artists so anxious they slow down and try to execute according to the critics’ desires. That’s one of the reasons I left. No one cares about what you do in L.A., they’re too into their own trip and shopping for more impressive wheels.

As for criticism in popular music, it died when Jon Landau left the field to manage Bruce Springsteen, critics are meaningless in music.

And have just about become so in movies.

So what we’ve got now is musicians and filmmakers telling us how great they are, even though they’re positively mediocre.

People take too long to write songs and make records. They’d be better off stopping what they’re doing and writing and recording another. Some of the best songs of all time were written almost instantly and recorded in one take. That’s what inspiration will do for you.

Don’t polish the turd, squeeze out some more excrement until you get to the gold.

Not that we want to see all the excrement, but we do want to see the gold.

Look at it this way, if you panned for gold by looking in one pan for hours, what are the odds you’d get rich? You’ve got to dig down deep in the river once again.

Turns out there’s a plethora of Banksy quotes. You can read them here.

The movie hype meant almost nothing to me. Made me aware, but did not make me want to go. I hate when people sell me things. What I want sells itself. What I want I hear about from trusted sources with no financial involvement. After reading this quote sent to me by a reader, I’m intrigued, I’m gonna track that documentary down.

Advertising has deadlines. It’s got to go, just like the show (that’s a reference to SNL, which I wrote about last week, did you read it?) By not thinking their work is so important, advertising agencies are able to deliver greatness…some of the time.

That’s reality. No one bats a thousand.

And as for how much time it took Steely Dan to make those classic albums, there’s an exception to every rule.“

(Reposted by permission of Bob Lefsetz)

Archive: http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/
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(Thanks Bob!)

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Digital locks, usage based billing, throttling, web censorship, and they are also strong supporters of the new iPod levy on digital objects that play digital files. They are also willing to give some leeway on Net Neutrality as long as ISPs comply with some simple rules. Retain everything on everyone for no less than 180 days, “for law enforcement purposes”. Ya, right, and I also write articles for Forbes… The data retention caveat is primarily to appease the demands of the MAFIAA in order to begin exploiting their customers in the courts. As near as I can tell, not being Canadian, is that Canada has the closest balance between consumers and content providers in the known world.

Note that I did not call Canadian Copyright balanced, but the closest balance I have seen in the free world. Similar to Spain and Denmark (which both are about to change rapidly, and will no longer be examples), Canada has some of the last vestiges of consumer friendly snippets in its’ copyright regime that few other countries enjoy. And yet, year after year, the MAFIAA places Canada on the Special 301 report, mainly because they refuse to bow to the cartel’s demands – digital locks, iPod levies and data retention for civil prosecution. I thought I would never type that headline, but in the face of overwhelming lobbying by the MAFIAA, Telcos, ISPs, content providers, and the aging musicians, anytime the public themselves gets and inch back from the draconian copyright cartels, it has to be considered a win. With the elections looming, the parties have put their cards on the table…

The Conservatives:

• want anti-spam legislation, which is good
• defended the fair dealing reform of C-32
• pressured the CRTC to reconsider Usage Based Billing (UBB)
• refused to budge on the digital locks provision, including electronic device levies
• want steadfast lawful access legislation requiring ISPs to retain data on its’ customers, “for law enforcement purposes”. More like the first step in facilitating copyright infringement lawsuits similar to the ones we have here in the United States, the “pay-up-or-else” business model
• mostly want to just sweep this under the carpet until after the election

After protestors to the Digital Economy Strategy compiled over 300,000 signatures in protest, the National Democratic Party (NDP) took notice, and modified their platform accordingly…

The NDP want:

• enshrinement of “Net Neutrality”, forcing ISPs to be “dumb pipes”, and nothing more
• to end price gouging and net throttling by prohibiting Usage Based Billing, with clear rules for ISPs that will be enforced by the CRTC
• introduction of a bill for copyright reform to review Canada’s stance concerning international obligations, while balancing consumer and creator rights
• to rescind the 2006 Conservative industry-orientated directives, and require the CRTC regulator stand up for public interests, and not just Big Content and the telecommunications industries (namely Bell/Rogers)

So, it looks like there is going to be copyright reform in Canada, whether Canada wants it or not. The question remains, will the Canadian people stand up for whats right?

It seems they already have with the massive protests concerning C-32 and all the publicity it has created. Dr. Michael Geist does an impressive job of keeping the public on Canada informed concerning copyright issues, and you should really read his blog if you are Canadian, and even if your not Canadian, it gives you very good insight in how the MAFIAA is attempting to subvert governments all over the world to their demands.

What it looks like to me is the NDP is pro-consumer, while the Conservatives are pro-MAFIAA. A rather oversimplification I realize, but it is not hard to see where loyalties lie in reading the Digital Economy Platform for each party. So the question remains; will Canadians vote in the NDP and potentially get some consumer friendly legislation out of the deal, or will Canadians vote for the Conservative party, that apparently wants to serve up Canadian citizens to the MAFIAA as hors d’œuvres?

Stay Tuned…

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The basic overview was that Jeffrey Clair for the U.S. Council, and Paul Clement, a prior solicitor general (can you say revolving door?) voiced their arguments based on Williams that allows them to circumvent violating the 7th Amendment concerning Statutory Damages Provision to excess. Mr Clair argued that Remittitur was not even an option that should be heard by the court, and that the excessive damages do not create a Constitutional issue.

Mr Clement, however, was much more colorful in framing the debate around the devastation the recording industry has suffered, and apparently it is all Joel’s fault. He completely side stepped the issue of performance rights violations and focused on the distribution angle. “It’s taking copyrighted work and putting it in the public domain”, he stated. He wrongly advised the court that ALL file sharing technology forces you to share a folder, thus making available.

One of the judges called him on this by asking, “is making available equate to distribution?” He quickly moved the argument over to Joel’s behavior being reprehensible and “we [RIAA] are devastated by file sharing distribution”, making it sound like the entire music industry’s woes are due to Joel downloading 30 songs. “We have technology that could prove distribution, your honor, but the defendant admitted his guilt, so that is proof enough”, “we can prove it, we just don’t know how many times the work in question was distributed”, he continued.

If you can prove it, then why can you not know how many times, and for which work was infringed upon? I would say you can’t. The EFF got to speak, a Ms Jule Aarons, who seemed scared shitless, again affirmed the defenses taken by Joel and others. Because Joel endured a civil trial, there was no jury, only during the damages portion of his trial was there a jury, and the EFF was not allowed to participate in education of the jury. Joel’s motion for fair use was denied, he was not allowed any witness, there was no proof provided by the plantiffs, and the EFF brief to the jury was denied because the plaintiffs argued that would be considered nullification.

Nesson spoke, what a beatnik, anyway, he started his 3 minutes quoting some obscure, irrelevant book, and then goes on to accuse the RIAA of “[they] articulate the statute as expansively as possible in their own interests”. That in 1909 Statutory Damages were introduced for commercial infringement ONLY, there was even a menu of specific infringements and specific damages for each. Even after the amendment in 1976, they changed the ranges of damages, removed the menu, and still maintained the target was commercial infringement, and not to bankrupt consumers. He compared willful file sharing to willful jaywalking.

It was good to actually sit thru the hearing and listen to these bright minds spew mindless drivel arguing that screwing over our customers with astronomical damage awards is just fine, nothing new here. The level of audacity heard in the plaintiffs voices is unmistakable. I believe the Constitution is clear on this, and that the Statutory Damages Provision was implicitly designed for commercial infringement.

File sharing is copyright infringement, nothing more, a civil offense. It is not theft, it is not even a lost sale. The rhetorical propaganda, outright lies of damages, and the abundance of self worth has done nothing to help an industry in the spirals of death. As more and more real research is done on the affects of file sharing, less and less of it is being heard, considered, or even reviewed during any copyright legislation.

So the question remains, will Joel be responsible for $675,000 in damages the greedy RIAA are demanding, or will he owe $67,500 that Judge Gertner imposed, or will the 1st Circuit Court reduce it to $30, which is what Joel believes he owes.

Stay Tuned…

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“If anyone has ever wondered if Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music and their RIAA have lost it, they should wonder no more”, we said at the time, going on >>>

“The corks were popping over in LaLa land”, said p2pnet in the middle of May.

That was because judge Kimba Wood had ruled LimeWire infringes copyright.

Now it looks as though one Kelly M. Klaus of Munger, Tolles & Olson, yet another RIAA posse, wants Wood to order LimeWire owner Mark Gorton to pay $1,500,000,000,000 for 200,000,000 alleged downloads, at $750 per.

To whom? To Arista Records, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, Capitol records, Electra Entertaiment, Interscope Records, Motown Recording, Priority Records, LaFace Records, Sony BMG (?), UMG Recordings and Warner Bros Records.

That’s one point five trillion dollars.

If you think that’s ridiculous, bear in mind the labels were once awarded almost $2 million because Jammie Thomas-Rasset allegedly downloaded 24 copyrighted songs.

It seems, however, we got the amount wrong.

Now, “Does $75 trillion even exist?” – asks  the American Lawyer.

“The thirteen record companies that are suing file-sharing company Lime Wire for copyright infringement certainly thought so”, it says. “When they won a summary judgment ruling last May they demanded damages that could reach this mind-boggling amount, which is more than five times the national debt.”

The Big 4 had demanded damages ranging from $400 billion to $75 trillion, arguing Section 504(c)(1) of the Copyright Act “provided for damages for each instance of infringement where two or more parties were liable”, says the post, continuing Manhattan federal district court judge Kimba Wood “held that the damage award would be staggering under this interpretation”

“As defendants note, plaintiffs are suggesting an award that is ‘more money than the entire music recording industry has made since Edison’s invention of the phonograph in 1877″, she wrote,  labelling the damages request ‘absurd’ and contrary to copyright laws, limiting damages to one damage award per work.

American Lawyer has LimeWire’ attorney, Joseph Baio joking the money would be better spent on paying for health care, or wiping out the US national debt.

The damages trial begins on May 2, it says.

Stay tuned.

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at the time – Does LimeWire owe the RIAA $1.5 trillion?, June 8, 2010
p2pnet – Big Music’s RIAA crows at LimeWire ruling, May 13, 2010
almost $2 million – Jammie Thomas-Rasset award reduced …, January 22, 2010
American Lawyer – Manhattan Federal Judge Kimba Wood Calls Record Companies’ Request for $75 Trillion in Damages ‘Absurd’ in Lime Wire Copyright Case, March 15, 2011

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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This year Nielsen released the U.S. figures, but nearly three months later, there has still not been a public release of the Canadian figures. However, a Globe and Mail story over the weekend included the data, which confirms that the Canadian digital market grew faster than the U.S. market in 2010.

Last year, digital music sales grew by 19.8% in Canada, while the U.S. market was basically flat, with just 1% growth.  As the chart below demonstrates, this marks five straight years in which the Canadian digital market has grown faster than the U.S.:

The recording industry will no doubt point to decelerating growth and the fact that the Canadian digital market comprises a smaller share of the market than in the U.S.  Yet the reality is that Canadian market’s global ranking is the same for both digital and non-digital sales – according to the Recording Industry in Numbers 2010, Canada ranks 7th worldwide on both counts.

Moreover, the Canadian market includes additional sources of revenue for artists and record labels that do not exist in the U.S. such as the private copying levy.

None of this should be taken to mean that the industry doesn’t face challenges. Like any media and entertainment industry, it obviously does, particularly as Canadians find alternate streaming sources for their music and different places to spend their entertainment dollars.

However, the claims that Canada is a piracy haven where Canadians don’t purchase digital music is undermined by the industry’s own data, which again shows the Canadian digital music market growing faster than the U.S.

Michael Geist – Michael Geist’s Blog
[Geist is the Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa. He can be reached by email at mgeist @ uottawa dot ca]

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March, 2011

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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At 3:57 am Pacific, her original Friday video had received 37,967,857 views (45,560 likes, 390,438 dislikes) and was still going strong.

When p2pnet posted on Saturday, it’d had 21,176,864 views.

This time, she’s gone acoustic — in her front room, it looks like.

And so far Friday unplugged has generated a paltry  18,190 views (73 likes, 361 dislikes).

“We don’t hate Rebecca Black because she’s famous, she’s famous because we hate her”, says one comment.

Says another, “have any of you guys tried singing a song with a whole verse that’s basically one note? It’s stinkin hard to make it sound good. Feel free to hate the music, but PLEASE lay off the girl.”

And another, “its kinda creepy that those old guys are hanging out with a bunch of 13 year olds …”

heh

(Cheers, Em)

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p2pnet – March, 2011

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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“Its Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday and Sunday comes afterwards.”

Funny you should say that, Jay.

Vivendi Universal (France), Sony (Japan), EMI (Britain), and Warner Music (US, but controlled by a Canadian) are past masters at manufacturing artist droids.

But now someone’s come along who does it better than them.

Way WAY better!

And that’s the appropriately named Ark Music Factory.

• Rebecca Black: “Are you sure these are the lyrics you want me to sing?”
  
• Producer: “What are you talking about?”
  
• Rebecca Black: “This part where I just kinda slowly explain the ordering of the days of the week?”
  
• Producer: “That’s the hook, baby! We breakin’ it down for the kids! They gonna know those days!!”

No Kidding. ‘Friday’, complete with heavily engineered vocals, is rocketing into outer Cyberspace.

Last night it was viralling fast toward 178,000,000 views, a number the members of the Big 4 organised music gang can only have wet dreams about.

By 4:00 am Pacific, it’d reached an incredible 21,176,864 views!

You have to see/hear it to believe it.

And even then you won’t.

But it does prove one thing.

The Big 4 have been aiming far too high.

(Cheers, Em)

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p2pnet – the return, March 18, 2011

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

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He was recently hammered for $6.8 million for his alleged part in an insider trading scandal.

Warner is a member of the Big 4 organised music gang who believe suing their customers is smart business practice.

So who’s after Warner?

According to Bloomberg News, quoting the Financial Times, Platinum Equity and Ron Burkle’s Yucaipa Cos, Sony Music, BMG Music Publishing and Len Blavatnik’s Access Industries Holdings LLC are all bidding for it.

Are any of them into music?

Platinum Equity says it’s a “global M&A&O firm specialized in mergers, acquisitions, and operations of companies that provide mission-critical products, services, and solutions in diverse industries”.

Yucaipa Cos is, says the Wikipedia, a Los Angeles-based holding company focusing on private equity investments with a “history of highly successful leveraged buyout investments in supermarket and grocery chains”.

Access Industries Holding says it “owns a diverse portfolio of iconic hotels and commercial real estate properties in the United States, South America and Europe, as well as holdings in various emerging technologies and luxury retail”.

Sony and BMG don’t know much about music either.

Bronfman, meanwhile, reportedly wants to buy EMI.

(Cheers, MR)

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hammered for $6.8 – Snapping up EMI, January 29, 2011
Bloomberg News – Warner Music Auction Involves at Least Five Bidders, FT Reports, March 7, 2011
EMI – Citigroup wins EMI punch-up, November 6, 2010

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi

World War III will be a global information war with no division between civilian & military participation ~ Marshall McLuhan

Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to p2pnet.net | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/feed