Day in the life of the RIAA
p2pnet news | RIAA News:- Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG and their RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) whine and grizzle about the hard times they’re experiencing at the hands of all those wicked P2P file-sharers.
‘We’ve being devastated!’ – cry the multi-billion-dollar Big 4 through the mouths of millionaire mouth-persons Mitch ‘The Godfather‘ Bainwol and Cary ‘Tough Love‘ Sherman, and one could be forgiven for thinking their troubles are something new.
However, that’s not the case.
No.
It’s non-stop trial and tribulation for the labels, beseiged on all sides by their evil customers who get up in the morning determined to rob them blind by sharing music with each other instead of buying it.
*sigh*
As MediaLoper points out in a stirring editorial, "Many have already forgotten the challenges the major labels were up against in the mid-90’s."
Back then, it says, "low cost CD burners were just becoming widely available," and >>>
While the drives were developed for data storage, it didn’t take long for unscrupulous consumers pirates to figure out that they could use CD burners to copy music CDs.
Piracy quickly became rampant as consumers "backed up" their CD collections and traded disks with friends. The problem was so serious that the major labels began to fear that CD sales would eventually plummet.
Fortunately, the RIAA was on the case. On January 31st, 1997, the organization unveiled a "breakthrough copyright protection system to prevent CD copying through computers".
As RIAA senior vice president of technology, David Stebbings said at the time:
"Today we have shown that prerecorded CDs can be protected from unauthorized copying on a CD-ROM recorder."
Always on the cutting edge, the RIAA also announced that the new breakthrough would protect music in the then burgeoning world of cyberspace. According to the RIAA press release:
"In addition to protecting copyrighted sound recordings from duplication on current and future multi-purpose recorders, the RIAA’s system can also restrict unauthorized online distribution."
I can only imagine the sort of chaos the recording industry might have gone through over the last decade if the RIAA hadn’t been so sophisticated in its understanding of the Internet, and its use of technology.
So, next time you pop your favorite CD into your RIAA approved CD player, pause for a moment and thank the RIAA. Without them we wouldn’t have music.
And pirates would rule the world.
Also See:
millionaire mouth-persons – RIAA boss ‘earned’ $1,472,944 in 2006, February 22, 2008
MediaLoper – Great Moments in RIAA History: January 1997, RIAA Develops System To Prevent CD Copying, January 17, 2008
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile – http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details. Download here.
February 27th, 2008 at 2:58 pm
No this is the day in the life of the RIAA
- Getup
- Drink Coffee
- pick an IP Adress out of a Hat
- Sue that IP Adress
- Get more coffee
- Buy a Porsche
- Pick another IP Adress out of a Hat
- Sue that IP Address
- Call MediaSentry to shoot the shit and kill time
- Pick a College/University out of a hat
- Sue everyone on campus
- Send a report to MediaSentry to start gathering data on those IP’s and School
- Call it a day
- Go Home
- Download some song of Bit Torrent (CD’s are too expensive and Apple has no selection)
- Somehow, Get Sleep at night