Boycott labels: Richard Stallman
p2pnet.net news:- “Sharing is friendship; to attack sharing is to attack the basis of society.”
So says the Free Software Foundation’s Richard Stallman.
In a letter to the Boston Globe, “Today’s legal music downloads are not an acceptable option, since they carry Digital Restrictions Management (called Digital Rights Management by its proponents) to restrict what people do with the files they have ‘bought’,” he says. “Therefore, as founder of the free software movement, I support the boycott of these products,” going on:
“The real solution is to legalize sharing. This won’t affect the record companies much, but if they did go out of business, we could rejoice that they can no longer threaten anyone.
“They pay zero cents of your CD purchase price to musicians (except for superstars), so the absence of these companies would be no loss to society.
“For the short term, colleges should make sure they do not collect information that could be used to identify students who share.”
Speaking of boycotts, there’s one going on right now.
As p2pnet posted, “The labels claim all kinds of things are causing significant dips in their sales numbers, but you never see anything about the fact that thanks to the Big 4’s bizarre sue ‘em all marketing campaign, a new consumer base has been born: music lovers who wouldn’t touch corporate ‘product’ with a barge pole.
“And that’s having an effect on sales. Bank on it.”
Also See:
Boston Globe – Let free music files ring, March 13, 2007
p2pnet posted – It’s March! RIAA boycott month!, March 1, 2007
If your Net access is blocked by government restrictions, try Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at thIs the end (of the Net) nigh?zze University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies. Go here for the official download, here for the p2pnet download, and here for details. And if you’re Chinese and you’re looking for a way to access independent Internet news sources, try Freegate, the DIT program written to help Chinese citizens circumvent web site blocking outside of China. Download it here.
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Tired of being treated like a criminal? They depend on you, not the other way around. Don’t buy their ‘product’. Do bug your local politicians. Use emails, snail-mail, phone calls, faxes, IM, stop them in the street, blog. And if you’re into organizing, organize petitions, organize demonstrations and then turn up on your local political rep’s doorstep, making sure you’ve contacted your local tv/radio station/newspaper in advance. Don’t just complain. Do something!
March 13th, 2007 at 12:12 pm
“Sharing is friendship; to attack sharing is to attack the basis of society.”
Yes, sharing is good. But sharing copyrighted material can and will hurt the entertainment industries and the artists. Not saying every download constitutes a lost sale, just saying that the quote is rather ignorant.
March 13th, 2007 at 12:31 pm
” But sharing copyrighted material can and will hurt the entertainment industries and the artists. ”
So is that one.
March 14th, 2007 at 6:47 am
The RICH artists, who get ALL the money. The rest is not supported and often won’t even be produced: their alternative is somewhere else than with the majors and the now obsolete distribution channels.
1 download = 1 lost sale? Wrong equation. Many people that download a CD, would NOT buy it. If CDs costed say 10 dollars, people wouldn’t think twice before buying – but here in Europe they cost usually more than 20 Euros (nearly 30 dollars): that really forces people to buy less.
Last but not least, even if people where willing to pay, it is often very difficult to find not commercial music/films/etc. through the official distribution channels (online and not), so the only way to find a particular piece of art is P2P. Culture get its share of attention only if it sells, otherwise it just gets forgotten by the distributors who then complain to lose money (on things that they don’t sell!).
March 14th, 2007 at 3:44 pm
‘But sharing copyrighted material can and will hurt the entertainment industries and the artists”
Many (most) artists actually want their copyrighted material to be shared everywhere. This is the best way to get their music heard and attact an audience to spend money at their live shows.
The recording industry even benifits from it by selling copies to those who have sampled music through the sharing procedure. – unless they been boycotted.
Artists who are with labels, unless they are megastars, don’t appear to be benfiting much – the Goo Goo Dolls say they have not made one penny despite having sold 800,000 CDs.
From:
http://www.canada.com/topics/entertainment/story.html?id=5e3db5f8-9308-437a-82fd-2dd80bc5f65d&k=28296
John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls:
ââ¬ÅOur last record sold maybe 800,000 copies ââ¬â we didnââ¬â¢t make any money. None. Not one penny from record sales. Imagine if we werenââ¬â¢t able to go out and tour and make money on tour. What would we have done? We would have had a gold record and go out and get jobs.ââ¬Â
March 15th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
Ol’ John there talks about how he didn’t make money from the record sales, but he says it in such a way that he’s implying there would be more sales, and thus actual payment, if file sharing didn’t happen.
I love the music of the Goo Goo Dolls. But I didn’t even recognize their music until an Internet friend of mine told me she loved it and insisted that it was the greatest. I downloaded some of her favorite songs from them, had a listen, and guess what? I’m one of their fans now. They never would have had me if it weren’t for file sharing networks making that music available at no charge–hell, I downloaded it all on Napster back in 1999-2000 or so, and in fact most of the things that I enjoy were discovered by random searches on file sharing networks or through references that I then plugged into eMule and had a listen at. If I don’t hear the music, I’ll never know that it’s worth paying for in the first place, and the radio, quite frankly, is <font size=”6″>shit.</font>
March 21st, 2007 at 1:19 pm
>Many (most) artists actually want their copyrighted material to be shared everywhere. >This is the best way to get their music heard and attact an audience to spend money >at their live shows.
Except for the many, many, artists that only record in studios, and never play a live show. I’m thinking of bands composed of one or two people with guitars, synthesizers, and a multi-track recorder, for example, who would never want to play a live show; their music is designed to be recorded, not listened to live. I know people like this. If that music was distributed for free to the greedy downloaders out there, it would not get made.
Electronic dance music is another catagory where the “live show” premise fails. Mixes, and similar releases, are not played live. They are played in clubs. If that kind of music was distributed solely for free, it would effectively stop existing (except for hobbyists and the like).
Greedy people may want to get free music, and greedy record companies may want to rip-off the artists with bad contracts. But fighting greed with greed is stupid. “Sharing” will only work if all these factors are taken into account.