These people should go jump in a lake with the rest of the RIAA retards. mp3’s don’t contain viruses. We don’t need this kind of brainless reporting (if you can call it reporting…).

Fire sharing?

“Lyons says it is helping students understand the difference between legal and illegal.”

‘Legal’: Costs money, uses DRM, which as the article states, you can’t copy it to your iPod.
‘Illegal’: Free, no DRM – you can copy it to your iPod.

“[Traci Logan] admits this is an uphill battle.”

Made harder for the fact they deliberately make it harder for people who have paid for their ‘product’ to use it how they want to.

Hopefully they’ll continue to deny the fact that DRM is helping to dig them an early grave.

Alternative ways of doing business will pop up, even if they are not backed by the RIAA.

These companies are all in the same business, the music/movie/bank/insurance/etc etc etc are NOT in different industries, they’re all doing the same thing. Providing a product called “dividends” to paying customers called “shareholders”. It’s like a subscription. You buy so many shares you get so many dividends each year.

The general public are the suppliers of the raw material for dividends, called “money”. The companies trade products and services for this “money”, process it and turn it into the finished product, the “dividend”. Unfortunately this process is very inefficient, with companies that end up with dividends of 10% of the total “money” they gathered considered to be doing pretty well.

To try and reduce this inefficiency the companies engage in “cost cutting” ie sacking staff, and raising the prices of their products and services. They also are continuing to lobby govts to get rid of those annoying “tax” expenses govts seem to expect to be paid. The general consensus among the companies is that if the govts want money they should buy shares or just get it off all those suppliers and stop bothering the companies.

Also competition is a really bad thing. It seems there are only fixed numbers of customers (shareholders) out there and having to fight for them with other companies just increases the inefficiency by unacceptable levels. This is why companies spend so much time and effort attempting to elminate all forms of competition.

If they succeed in this, then the customers (shareholders) will have to get their subscriptions (shares) from the winning company and that company will get so much market share and increased revenue, it’ll be great!

So in summary, the shareholders are the customers, the general public are the money suppliers and the tax dept is just an expense the companies would really like to get rid of, but all their lobbying about this hasn’t worked yet. So when a company rips you off yet again, all the while protesting that they are very customer focussed, now you’ll know they’re right. It’s just that YOU are not the customer they have in mind.

In this case, the music industry is very worried about being unable to supply enough product (dividends) to their customers (shareholders) because for some strange reason, the suppliers (general public) aren’t trading as much raw materials (money) for their products (crap) as they should be. Demanding that the suppliers (general public) do more trading of raw materials (money) for the products (crap) also doesn’t seem to be working either.

Yes i realise the way i’m describing the situation represents an unsustainable business model that can’t possibly last. You’re right. It can’t. Thats why all the constant merging, demerging, spinoffs, reinventions etc etc etc etc. It IS unsustainable and the music industry and movie industry are going to discover this the hard way. Soon, i hope.

It’s probly still only 1 in 20 would try to contact the company they have the complaint about, tho perhaps a higher percentage would just complain on their forums. I’m sure the net means a whole lot more ppl can hear that their complaint is not the only one and that they are not alone, than ever before.

http://cbs4boston.com/specialreports/local_story_339200212.html

Then the customesr have been shafted too, through payola and absurdly high prices, where a cd that cost $1.00 to manufacture and ship sells for $15 to $20 and the cd is generally full of worthless songs.

Because music has been going downhill in quality in the last 50 years, organized music cannot stand the winds of change.

The music racket days are numbered.

Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com

The music industry has long since abandoned all pretense that they are interested in producing a quality product. They are in it *strictly* for the money, and that means manufacturing low-risk music that they think people will buy.

If there is a downturn in music sales, the record company execs won’t blame the music, they’ll blame the customers. “We can’t be losing money because our music sucks; we spent $X million on market research, the hottest jailbait talent, marketing tie-ins, promotion, and market saturation! It must be because of those evil file sharers! That’s why they’re not buying our music! It has to be! It’s all their fault!”

Unfortunately, that means that before the music industry wakes up and discovers that its been digging its own grave (sleep-digging?) it will continue to punish all the law-abiding purchasers of legitimate music with increasingly restrictive DRM in a vain attempt to stop the “evil file sharers.” Anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of good business practices knows that the fastest way to bankrupcy is to punish your own customers. The record companies, in their unique position as a near-monopoly, can probably get away with this for a little while longer before the backlash. But the backlash is coming, and it will be a lot messier than a “slight downturn in sales.”

You had to expect them to try and shift the blame onto file sharers, though.

I should have added that it can’t be extorted either.

We see industry studies all the time, but here’s one I’d like to see. Obviously those that have been attacked by Big Music are gonna want nothing to do with them in the future, but how many lives does each one of their actions really affect? I’m talking about wives, husbands, children, mothers, fathers, cousin’s, friends, etc. How many friends and family members are lost customers due to a single lawsuit?? They all see the ugliness first hand as well. Let’s use 10 as a nice round unscientific number and apply it. 17,000 lawsuits could potentially equal 170,000 lost customers purely out of disgust in two years time. And this does not even figure in the DRM backlash and the internet word of mouth.

I think the writing is already on the wall.

http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2147620/mobile-players-unfilled

Lets see now, record companies make the cd’s inconveinient to buy (you have to go out of your way compared with P2P and its expensive) and non interoperable even dangerous (DRM).

How to be a Marketing Genius
http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2005/12/how_to_be_a_mar.html

When something is free, that’s what people expect to pay for the next one.

http://www.boingboing.net/2005/11/14/sony_anticustomer_te.html