Big Four vs AllofMP3.com
p2p news view / p2pnet: The Big Four Organized Music gang, Warner Music, EMI, Sony BMG and Vivendi Universal, are hell bent on crushing anything which looks even remotely like it could become competition. And Russia’s AllofMP3.com readily falls into that category,
From a music lover’s point of view, it’s all about value for money – paying a reasonable price and expecting a fair return.
From the Big Four’s perspective, it’s all about screwing ‘consumers’ and giving back as little as they can get away with without actually getting sued for false advertising.
Has anyone tried that yet?
Meanwhile, here’s frequent poster _Jile_ on fair dues. >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Can you hear me now
By _Jile_ – p2pnet
Can’t you hear it in the background? “Can you hear me now?!!” they’re poking at the world with their don’t hold it against me lol
I have strong opinions about ‘fair use’ or rather, what ‘used’ to be fair use before they killed it.
It’s depressing to look at the music scene today. It no longer excites me to listen to music and having been a major part of my life growing up, that’s a painfully strong statement. As a child, I remember (sorry to say it but it’s true) Michael Jackson’s first album coming out and begging my parents for the tape and eventually they let me have it.
But before getting it I recorded the songs off the radio and replayed the songs hundreds of times. I spent hours memorizing whatever words I didn’t already know and sang in front of the mirror in the living room thinking about being like Mike. (He wasn’t always known as a freak, so don’t hold it against me lol). And did having the music make me avoid buying Mike’s Tape? Heck No, man. I had to have it…..
Why do I mention such a story in this public area? Simple. What are our kids going to remember music for? Are they going to remember wanting to listen to their idol’s new music or are they going to remember being too afraid to download and listen to their idol and thereby engraining into themselves for the future the desire to buy some of their childhood music in some hard-format later in life (if there is any music being made now worthy of such memory).
Now, I hate what big-music stands for so much I haven’t bought anything since Metallica’s black album came out (they sued Napster and while I thought Napster was junk as a p2p aplication, they were attacking their customers so I began my boycott at that time).
The music industry would have the world believe every download (or other way to exercise fair use) costs them a sale. I’d argue the other side, that if they have good music, it’s not going to be enough to have a stupid mp3 taster – true fans have to have the full CD with cover art, inserts, etc.
Digital is fine and good: it has it’s place, but it’s definitely a lesser quality format, no matter how you cut it.
Now, all this is fine and good – though when you also look at the Russian income, I just don’t see where the money-grubbing-music-industry expects to have people come up with it to pay their exorbitant fee’s.
Russia knows their people cant afford what the US allows it’s citizens to pay for music, so it allows anyone to pay the government a fee (remember – communist country – all things are done for the benefit of the country, not a lowly company like the RIAA) and the company can give the music away for free – legally.
Should Russian government change this? It’ll only mean music isn’t played, not what the RIAA expects, that it’d inspire people to buy music at higher prices.
I’ve talked about this before, but if you only made a couple thousand dollars a year in pay, you’d have to live with other family and pool money together to pay for a meager life.
I’d challenge any member of the RIAA (not just an artist, but one of their corporate exec’s) to live in a common town of Russia, even in a good factory job – to then have enough after feeding themselves, their kids and spouse and the heating/housing bills, and then to try and ‘buy’ extra’s like music at full prices seen in America.
You realize that if you relate our prices to there’s it’s over $276.26USD for a cd?
Really!
To make the prices level with America, the Russian cd’s would have to be CAPPED at $1.48USD… and that’d be an expensive one.
Check out my more detailed review of Russian cost compared to the US here.
Just my 10 cents.
_-Jile-_
Digg this.
Also See:
ethical hacker – John Doe, qualified hacker, June 20, 2006
up in arms – Gary McKinnon extradition, May 10, 2006
BBC – McKinnon’s extradition condemned, July 7, 2006
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July 7th, 2006 at 5:52 pm
On September 1, 2006 the changes to the Russian copyright legislation will come into force. Since January 2006 the site has been making direct agreements with rightholders and authors at the same time increasing the price of the music compositions and transferring the royalties directly to the artists and record companies. The aim of AllofMP3.com is to agree with all rightholders on the prices and royalties amounts by September 1, 2006.
http://allofmp3.com/statement.shtml
July 8th, 2006 at 12:31 am
Hey I lived in Ukraine for 10 years and trust me we have ways of getting around everything. You shut down our sites we dl everything from your P2P and share it between the 50 families that are in our building all of who are connected by a wired network.
July 8th, 2006 at 7:01 am
I know this, and you know this, and certainly the music industry knows this, but considering how they continually give new meaning to the word “anal” on a daily basis, even this is not enough to make them happy.
Instead they want to make as much noise about this as possible so in the end they can pat themselves on the back and claim “Victory”, even though this change of copyright law was passed in 2004, with this coming Sept. set as the date for it to go into effect!! Long before they started all their noise about the site and put them in their sights. Then to top it off, they fire off another of their famous lawsuits to:
1) try to extract any $$ they can from them before the new law goes into effect (though they’ll never likely see any)
2) Make it appear that they have beaten them into submission.
It’s just another chest-thumping PR smokescreen once again folks.
Take away their smoke and mirrors and it’s just another BS PR campaign.